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you will find that Commodore had “private showings” of these peripherals without “officially announcing” anything.) As far as I know, by the time you read this, the new Amiga will have been “officially announced” and on its way to market. So what makes the 2000 so special? Sure it’s nice to have the extra memory, the slots, the flexibility, etc., but what is so different about that? The thing that makes the 2000 truly unique is the fact that it is a "multi” machine. Multi-processor, multi-DOS and multitasking. The 2000 provides a bridge between systems, processors and operating environments. Most people don’t care whether they are running their software or hardw'are under MS-DOS, AmigaDOS, Unix or gribbleflix, just as long as it works. The 2000 will provide a system, an "uber-system” if you will, that will make the software, hardw'are, etc. nearly invisible to the end user. No matter what kind of end use or application you need or want, the 2000 should let you buy the peripherals, processors, software, drives or whatever else is needed. With the 2000’s multitasking abilities, giving you parallel coprocessing and parallel DOS, you have a machine that is almost unlimited in its configurations and potential. It will be a while before all the possibilities are grasped and implemented. Since the 2000 can act like almost any machine on the market, it is unlike any other machine on the market. The article pretty much describes the machine, its inner workings, etc., but what wre didn’t talk about was the impact it’s going to have. What does the new machine mean to the future of Commodore? What will it mean to software and hardware developers? What will it mean to everyone who already owns an Amiga 1000 and doesn’t have enough money to go out and buy a whole new* system? What will it mean to Amiga World? As for the future of Commodore, I think the 2000 is a signal that Commodore is eager to make as great an impact in the U. S. business market as it has in Europe, but they know that they will have to offer more than just PC compatibility. Other computers offer that at a much lower price. Commodore wanted the 1000 to be a business machine, hut the business world has been trained to look for certain things in a personal computer (whether they are right or not), and the Amiga didn’t quite fit the description. The 2000 deals with most of the objections that the business w orld had about the 1000 as a business machine, since ii unleashes the Amiga’s full potential. The fact that Commodore is bringing out a new* Amiga rather than a newr C-64 or 128 proves that they are committed to the Amiga, not just as a single machine, hut as an entire line. That is good for all Amiga owners. The 2000 should have good sales in the next few* years, and the Amiga line will continue to grow.

Document sans nom
¦¦¦ -
Digital Solution* Inc. brings yog the light with easy lo use software
specifically cMgned to use
the power of your Commodore Amiga
Announcing:
LRD’W Writer LPD* Planner LPD* Filer loch ol these programs give you all ftie functions you would c-jTpfrct liam pirqduclMtv sett- ware plus the following unique features:
UPD tf Writer, LPD'" Planner and LfD'* Filer can run individually or together When running together information can be transferred fiom one application 1a anoihor manually, or automaticalty using "links'', a transfer procedure unique to LPD Software.
The software allows you to see all projects-and applications through windowing. Each application con then be doomed" up to Full screen size. Vdu coin execute a command by using the mouse, function keys or short cut" com mond sequences A "suspend" feature allows you 1a pul away all applications you are cur rently working on and a "resume” command will restore the application* to Ihe presuspended stale. Also featured is on lino memory resident help ¦In addition. LPD* Writer,
LPK> V Planner and tPD Fiier each have their own very special CharacteMstics
Powerful software lhairs simple to use.
Digital Solutions Inc.
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Publisher
Stephen Twombly
Editor-In-Chief
Guy Wright
Managing Editor Shawn Lafiamme
Senior Editor Vmoy Laughner
Technical Editor Robert M. Ryan
Review Editor Linda J. Barrett
Contributing Editors Peggy Herrington,
David T. McClellan,
Lou Wallace
Art Director
Rosslyn A. Frick
Designers Anne Dillon Roger Goode
Production Advertising Supervisor Howard G. Happ
Advertising Safes Manager
Stephen Robbins Sales Representative Kenneth Blakeman
Advertising Coordinator Heather Paquette 1-800-441-4403
West Coast Sales Giorgio Saluti, manager 1-415-328-3470
3350 IW. Bayshore Road, Suite 201 Palo Alto, CA 94303 Executive Secretary Cynde Garrett
Secretary Laura Livingston
Marketing Manager
Wendie Haines
Business Manager
Barbara Harris
President CEO
James S. Povec
Vice-President Finance
Roger Murphy Director of Operations
Matt Smith
Executive Creative Director
Christine Destrempes
New Projects Director
Jeff DeTray
Fulfillment & Special Projects Manager
Craig Pierce
Director of Corporate Production
Dennis Christensen
Typesetting Manager Linda P. Canale
Typographer Doreen Means
Manufacturing Manager
Susan Gross
Director of Circulation
Frank S. Smith
Direct Marketing Manager Bonnie Welsh
Single Copy Sales Manager Linda Ruth
Direct Sales Liz Kehn 800-343-0728
Circulation Business Manager Brenner Fuller
Director of Credit Sales & Collections
William M. Boyer
FEATURES
The Amiga 2000
By Bob Ryan
Take an Amiga 1000. Add about 750K, for a total of one megabyte of internal RAM.
Add a bunch of internal slots for memory expansion, Amiga and IBM PC. Cards, maybe another CPU. Put room in for two more disk drives, hard or floppy. Put contents into a metal box and fasten securly. Add an enlarged keyboard. Fasten Seat Belt.
M Between Two Worlds: The A2088 Board
By Bob Ryan
PC in a Window, or How Commodore bridged the gap between AmigaDOS and MS DOS by making an IBM PC-on-a-board that you can plug into the new Amiga 2000.
MARCH APRIL 1987
CONTENTS
VOLUME 3. NUMBER 2
ARTICLES
DEPARTMENTS
Easy Palettes
By Christoph C. Borel-Donokue
An Amiga Basic program that will let you create, customize and store color palettes for use in your Basic programs.
Graphic Hardcopy and the Amiga
By Morion A. Kevelson
More on capturing the Amiga’s flashy graphics on paper. Good advice and information about products, procedures and techniques for making high-quality printouts.
IS Absoft’s AC FORTRAN
By William B. Catchings and Mark L. Van Name
A review of Absoft’s FORTRAN compiler for the Amiga; a serious implementation of FORTRAN 77.
Fundamentals of C;
Playing with Intuition
By William B. Catchings and Mark L, Van Name
Now that you’ve learned some C, here's a tutorial on programming Intuition with this powerful language.
Repartee
Culled from the avalanche of fan mail.
Hors d’oeuvres
Treasures from the microwaves of your insight.
COLUMNS
HI Digital Canvas
Zeitgeist
What difference could the Amiga 2000 make...for you and Amiga World?
S3 info.phile
By William B. Catchings and MarkL. Van Name
More That’s New in 1.2! A look at version
1. 2 Workbench improvements, including Preferences additions, icon and gadget handling and the new and improved Notepad.
Artistic stretches of the imagination.
Reviews
Defender of the Crowm MAS-Drive20 Hard Disk Logistix
Money Mentor; PAR Home I;
PHASAR; and 2 + 2 Gridiron!
Goldspell
Computer Baseball Marble Madness Revurw update: Scribble! 2.0
What’s New?
New products and more new products.
FH Help Key
It never hurts to ask.
AmigaWorUi (ISSN 0883*2390) is an independent journal not connected with Commodore Business Machines, Inc. AmigaW'ojld is published bimonthly by CW Communications Peterborough. Inc.. 80 Elm St.. Peterborough, Nil 03458. U.S. subscription rate is S19.97. one year. Canada and Mexico $ 22.97. one year. U.S. funds drawn on U.S. bank only. Foreign Surface $ 39.97. Foreign Air Mail $ 74.97. U.S. runds drawn on U.S. bank. Second class postage pending at Peterborough, NH. And at additional mailing offices. Phone: 603-924-9471. Entire contents copvright I9H7 by CW Communications Peterborough. Enc. No part of this publication may Ik- printed or otherwise reproduced without written permission from the publisher. Postmaster: Send address changes to Subscription Services. PO Box 954,
hirmingdale. NY 11735. Nationally distributed by International Circulation Distributors. Amiga World makes every el fort to assure the accuracy of articles, listings and circuits published in the m.iga inr. AmigaWmU assumes no responsibility lor damages due to errors or omissions.
Zeitgeist
What Does the New Amiga Mean?
This column is probably not the first thing that you read in every issue. (It’s the first thing that I read, but then again, I write it.) I imagine that most of you have already turned to the article on the new Amiga.
Atniga World may not be as fast as television (or even the pony express) when it comes to getting out news flashes, but when you read about it in AmigaWorld, the information carries more weight and reality.
Finally! Another Amiga! GREAT! Since before the beginning, we have heard that there was going to be an entire line of Amigas. Rangers, B-52s and anything else people can dream of are still being talked about all the time. I had my own visions of the next Amiga, and I have to admit that I was only about 40 percent right. Now that I have seen the 2000, I am more impressed with Commodore’s ability to engineer new computers than I am with the power of my own imagination. The 2000 is more than just a souped-up 1000, and yet it is not a drastic jump into a different operating system or disk file structure. It is still compatible with 1000 software, and it is possible for developers to adjust hardware configurations to allow peripheral compatibility as
well. There are so many ele-
*
ments to the 2000 that we are going to be spending a lot of time in the future talking about its special features. If you don’t see it in this issue, don’t worry, we have a lot of time to peel back the 2000 petal by petal. This is just the start.
The article and photographs were all done in New York City with heavily armed Commodore
By Guy Wright
guards breathing over our shoulders, making sure that we weren't slipping chips into our pockets. You wouldn’t believe the rigmarole we had to go through to get a preview of the machine. Commodore has gotten very nervous about officially announcing things before they can ship them. (Note; the operative word here is “officially” We have all heard about products like the Sidecar, Genlock, etc. that took months to ship, but if
vou check the records, I think
-
you will find that Commodore had “private showings” of these peripherals without “officially announcing” anything.) As far as I know, by the time you read this, the new Amiga will have been “officially announced” and on its way to market.
So what makes the 2000 so special? Sure it’s nice to have the extra memory, the slots, the flexibility, etc., but what is so different about that? The thing that makes the 2000 truly unique is the fact that it is a "multi” machine. Multi-processor, multi-DOS and multitasking. The 2000 provides a bridge between systems, processors and operating environments. Most people don’t care whether they are running their software or hardw'are under MS-DOS, AmigaDOS, Unix or gribbleflix, just as long as it works. The 2000 will provide a system, an "uber-system” if you will, that will make the software, hardw'are, etc. nearly invisible to the end user. No matter what kind of end use or application you need or want, the 2000 should let you buy the peripherals, processors, software, drives or whatever else is needed. With the 2000’s multitasking abilities, giving you parallel coprocessing and parallel DOS, you have a machine that is almost unlimited in its configurations and potential. It will be a while before all the possibilities are grasped and implemented.
Since the 2000 can act like almost any machine on the market, it is unlike any other machine on the market.
The article pretty much describes the machine, its inner workings, etc., but what wre didn’t talk about was the impact it’s going to have. What does the new machine mean to the future of Commodore? What will it mean to software and hardware developers? What will it mean to everyone who already owns an Amiga 1000 and doesn’t have enough money to go out and buy a whole new* system? What will it mean to Amiga World?
As for the future of Commodore, I think the 2000 is a signal that Commodore is eager to make as great an impact in the
U. S. business market as it has in Europe, but they know that they will have to offer more than just PC compatibility. Other computers offer that at a much lower price. Commodore wanted the 1000 to be a business machine, hut the business world has been trained to look for certain things in a personal computer (whether they are right or not), and the Amiga didn’t quite fit the description. The 2000 deals with most of the objections that the business w orld had about the 1000 as a business machine, since ii unleashes the Amiga’s full potential. The fact that Commodore is bringing out a new* Amiga rather than a newr C-64 or 128 proves that they are committed to the Amiga, not just as a single machine, hut as an entire line. That is good for all Amiga owners. The 2000 should have good sales in the next few* years, and the Amiga line will continue to grow. Yes, the 2000 will attract the business market, but >-
1 -I -I -I
A -f ri -1
• 1 ¦ I L T V*" Lw
rtainer Dec. 1986
Computer
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. . .offers you an intelligent alternative to the Amiga CLI com raining features familiar to users of UNIX. W ritten by the authors of AmigaDOS, Metacomco SHELL integrates with the entire AmigaDOS environment.
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Metacomco MAKE - NEW! UNIX-like MAKE utility ......S 69.95
Metacomco TOOLKIT * Smartest tools available for the Amiga $ 49.95
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Registered trademarks; Lattice • Lattice, Inc, UNIX - Bell Labs; Amiga • Commodore Amiga.
TOT
Circle 16 on Reader Service card.
SrThe
Commodore Show -
¦ Fri., Feb. 20, 10:00-6:00 ¦ Sat., Feb. 21, 10:00-6:00 "Sun., Feb. 22, Noon-5:00
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I think it will appeal to the vertical markets first, such as desktop publishing and video, interactive training and business presentations. The expandability and flexibility (with custom and specialized boards) is going to sell die 2000 to people and businesses that need highly specialized features and don't care whose name is on the case.
What will the 2000 mean to developers? T he software developers will either continue to develop for the 1000 and won’t bother to make changes for the 2000, develop for both machines, or switch over to developing only for the 2000. Some developers will produce exclusively 2000 software as a way to break into a tight field (imagine a company with a new paint program trying to compete with Aegis and Electronic Arts), but most developers will continue to work on products that will run on both machines. Software products will add a depth of new features that fully utilize the 2000; the same software will run on a 1000, but these new features will require internal and external add-ons. There will be opportunities for new Amiga developers wanting to break into existing markets and new markets (e.g., software that makes use of both MS-DOS and AmigaDOS or unique ways to merge programs).
Hardware developers are the ones who will be most effected by the new 2000. All the add* ons developed for the 1000 will have to be redesigned, but, since everything for the 2000 is internal, the manufacturing costs will go down (manufacturers won’t have to put their boards inside cases). The 2000 will give hardware people new opportunities to develop things like controller boards for PC hardware, but it will open up the competition for things like hard disks. Whatever happens, it should be interesting.
For all of you Amiga 1000 owners who don’t have the extra S$ S to rush out and buy the new 2000, you will also be able to benefit from all of the new features of the 2000. With memory expansion cards available and external hardware options, a 1000 can do anything that a 2000 can do. Software will run on both machines, so developers won’t be limiting their audience by working on 2000 software exclusively.
My best guess is that if you want the high-end specialty addons that are going to be developed for the 2000, then you will probably end up buying either a 2000 or the memory and slot peripherals for the 1000. However, offsetting that trend, there will probably be more inexpensive add-ons developed for the 1000 market. If you need a 50mb hard disk or super-clean composite video output and don’t care about cost, then the 2000 will probably be your machine, but if you only need a 5-, 10- or 20mb hard disk at prices that are bound to come down, then stick with your 1000. If all you crave is PC compatibility, then the Sidecar should suffice.
Lastly, what will the Amiga 2000 mean to AmigaWorld? It will mean that we will have a lot more to cover, more advertisers, more machines out there, more readers and (I hope) more reasons to go monthly. It also means more work, more headaches, more confusion and more excitement, but I prefer it that way. I suppose that we will have to start giving more coverage to MS DOS when hybrid software begins to overlap the two operating systems, but we aren’t going to turn into another PC-focused magazine. Nor are we going to become a business magazine. There are many, many areas of common interest to all Amiga owners, whether they own 1000s, 2000s or whatever else comes along. Additionally, AmigaWorld will integrate coverage of the new vertical markets. We will adapt to the situation, getting bigger or more frequent or both. Whatever we do, you can bet we will remain the bcst.R
The Mirror Copier Can Now Bac
A Disk Almost As Fast As Maraud
Duplication Speed 83 Sec.
1 Minute 48 Sec.
Upgradable With Strategy Files
Mouse Driven User Interface
Exit Without Restarting Amiga
Runs From Workbench or CLI
Makes Multiple Simultaneous Copies From One Original
Copies Itself
Copies The Mirror
Price
YES
NO
YES
NO
YES
NO
¥
Marauder II is the most powerful copier ever produced for Amiga. It will automatically copy ALL software released to date , and it requires no hardware modification of any kind.
It produces completely unprotected copies of most Amiga software faster and better than any other copier.
No other copier can copy as much software as Marauder II.
YES
• J.
W'
YES
NO
1
1
YES
NO

YES
NO

$ 3945
S49£5 L
f
Marauder II also has the most advanced user interface your money can buy. If you have an Amiga you already know how to use Marauder U. You never have to reboot your machine to use Marauder II, it is completely compatible with
the Amiga’s multitasking operating system.
Marauder II has been designed with your future needs In mind. As protection schemes change you can update the program yourself with our unique “Strategy Files."
The Strategy Files are developed as new software Is released so that you can get them quickly and easily when you need them.
Compare the features of Marauder II to our competition and you’ll see that Marauder II is quite simply the best copier you can get, at any price! And for only
139. 95 you can rest assured that your software investment is safely protected against damage, loss or theft.
Don’t wait, order now!
And It Only Costs About 25% V
Marauder II Mirror
NOW YOU CAN SAVE ANY SCREEN, FROM ANY PROGRAM, ANYTIME WITH GRABBIT.
This amazing keyboard macro processor is just what you need to give your fingers a rest. The Genie is always at work to save you time and keystrokes. Complicated or repitious keyboard sequences are easily assigned to a key you choose through the Genie’s Pop-Up Macro Definition Window. You can also load and save your
With GRABBIT you can capture exactly what you see on your screen in an instant, regardless of what programs you're running. GRABBIT works with all video modes, including “Hold and Modify."
& Ini la
What's more, GRABBIT runs completely in the background, transparent to your other software. GRABBIT is always ready for you to use, even when you’re in the middle of another program. As if that is not enough, GRABBIT requires only about 10K RAM to operate, and it supports dozens of printers.
TO
GRABBIT is truly a productivity power tool for your AMIGA!
With Key Genie One Key Launches 1000 Strokes!
Favorite macro sequences on disk. Once saved, the macros can be automatically installed at startup to save time. In addition to the Genie's powers. Discovery Software has added a bonus program “Turbo-Shell'’. The Shell is an AmigaDOS performance enhancer that you shouldn't be without] The Shell gives you the capability to recall previous CLI
commands with the arrow keys so that mistyped commands can be quickly corrected, and frequently used commands can be easily repeated. Fast AmigaDOS command replacements give you UNIX-style performance from your Amiga.
What other software does so much for you at such a low price. Only $ 49.95 + S5 shipping and handling.
GRABBIT is far superior to other screen-printing “programs" because of its small size and quick performance. No complicated setup is required, just install and go! Also, GRABBIT doesn’t require the screen to remain visible during printing or saving, and stopping the print operation is as easy as starting it.
GRABBIT supports all standard Amiga printer drivers. GRABBIT also supports full color printing.
In addition to GRABBIT’s printing capabilities, the package also includes a powerful utility program “ANYTIMEThe ANYTIME bonus
program is a “Preferences" style palette requester that allows you to change any colors of any screen, anytime! With ANYTIME, you are NOW capable of customizing all colors to match your printer’s hardcopy to the screen’s colors.
Once you start using GRABBIT and the bonus program ANYTIME you will want it on every disk. You get all the power of this sizzling new software for an unbelievably low S29.9S + $ 5 shipping and handling.
11 -1-86
903 E. Willow Grove Ave., Wyndmoor, JR4 19118 (215) 242-4666
Circle 89 on Reader Service card.
AMIGA TM is a registered trademark of Commodore- Amiga Inc UNIX is a registered trademark of Bell Laboratories
Repartee
From the Livingroom...
Our fatuity just loves the Amiga.
We recently completed a project using the Amiga, two VCRs, a slide projector, TV camera, audio cassette player, color monitor, microphone, Aegis Images and Digi-View software. The result was a unique travel log. We digitized several slides and added humorous commentaries with the text capability of Images. Dynamic, colorful script was used to introduce each country. An overall background soundtrack was dubbed over the video. Once this was completed, verbal commentary explained the details of the trip. The hookup was rather complicated, so my Dad handled that problem.
We really enjoyed the creative capability of the Amiga. This project eifen sparked my Mom's interest in the computer.
Noelle C. Adams (age 14) Chesterland, OH
., .to the Laboratory
As a professor of architecture writing a technical book, my Amiga has been my constant companion for many months. It has done everything I have asked of it word processing, spreadsheets, data management, matrix algebra and other calculations, and all the drawings that will appear in my book, as well as the color lecture slides that will accompany it.
'The Amiga, the furthest thing I can think of from a door stop, is a real tiger. All the other computers in our university computer labs (all of the best ones are there) seem like old gray mares after using the Amiga. I see that some Amiga owners with little appreciation of the graphic and plastic arts have been put off perhaps intimidated, by your coverage of the Amiga's prowess in the visual arts that are so much a part of my personal and professional life. But take heart, there is a tremendous ground-swell of those such as I who are exploring and exploiting the Amiga for the many things it can do for us.
Eugene E. Crommett, Ph.D.
University of Puerto Rico San Juan, PR
Whither Tecmar?
I see one notable omission in your Hardware Buyer's Guide [Jan. Feb. ’57] a full line of expansion units from Tecmar. What happened at Tec- mar? As I believe, they were among the first to offer hardware for the Amiga. Their line included the T- card expansion unit, T-disk hard disk and the T-modem, which offered features not available elsewhere, such as tone-decode and audio-circuit access.
Has Tecmar discontinued their line of Amiga products?
Mark Barnes Los Angeles, C4
Tecmar is no longer manufacturing products for the Amiga market. Also out of the picture is The Micro Forge and their line of Amiga hardware.
Editors
Wanted: Professional Software
I feel very fortunate that I do not need to use my Amiga for any serious business applications. Since I have purchased my machine, only a fen) quality business packages have been introduced. I have yet to find a word processor that supports mail merge and macro functions, finding hardware at a reasonable price seems to be a problem, too. Did Commodore lack the confidence or the ability to develop a line of peripheral hardware such as a hard drive,
a color printer or an expansion chassis?
Developers must start to exploit this machine's power for GAD, business and desktop publishing. Realtime I O control and monitoring are also possible applications for the Amiga.
Richard A. Ireland
Charleston, WV
Up until now, there wasn't a system under $ 2,000 that could meet the needs of small businesses without requiring the user to also he a programmar. The Amiga, with the right software, could solve a lot of the problems encountered by small businesses.
Question: Isn't the Amiga multitasking? Why doesn't the software act like it?
IBM Pcs, Apples and the rest, including the Amiga, make you do the same re-entry into a dozen separate, non-integrated software packages.
It's easier and cheaper to use a Dome Ledger ($ 3.95) than an IBM PC ($ 3,950). Unless Amiga software can be created to solve problems for attorneys, students, printers, artists, store owners, salesmen and writers, then the Amiga is doomed to anonymity,
R. Skip Uldriks
Holmes Beach, FL
As editors of Amiga World, you are probably in touch with software developers all the time. Let them know that we Amiga owners need high-quality output for our graphics (business graphics and slides), such as output to a 2,000- to 4,000-line film recorder. Also, we need a quality desktop-publishing package with output to a black-and-white laser printer, such as an Imogen $ 203 XP or another high-quality laser
printer capable of printing a full page at 300 DPI or better. Without this kind of output, the Amiga cannot compete with the Macintosh or IBM PC AT, both of which already have this professional software.
Ron Dube Ossining, NY
Scribble! Rebuttal
I have just read the review of Scribble! [jan . Feb. '$ 7, p. 78] and have to give my views about it. Although the review was not of version
2. 0, which I am using, I believe my comments are still applicable.
Mr, Watt and I disagree on one major aspect of the program. He complains that the program forces you to use embedded commands to change the text format in the middle of a document. If I am that picky about the layout of text at the time of entering it, I might just as well use ED or Notepad. With all this computing power available, why should I have to do all the work of formatting text? I would even like to see a few more dot commands. The feature I miss most from my old word processor (Scripsit, on a TRS- 80 M4) is vertical centering, which made letter formatting easy. Scripsit also had an automatic paragraph indent and blank line ability.
When I'm writing something, I just want to write. The layout can come later, when the text is finished.
Dennis Lee Bieber Sunnyvale, C
See Douglas Watt's review of Scribble! 2.0 in this issue, p. 94.
Editors
Send your letters to: Repartee. Amiga World editorial, 80 Elm St., Peterborough, NH 03458. Letters may he edited for space and clarity.®
EpAiftf Igriitie-.- Airy W>v1f11 s ytvUi u
Computer Leg *14Atc InsurJinc*
Kite
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tel
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it s making every other spreadsheet old fashioned!
Rhe original MaxiPlan™ was named he Best Amiga™ Spreadsheet of 1986 by F.A.U.G., the worlds argest and most active Amiga iser group. Now in 1987. Oxxi is jroud to introduce MaxiPlan 5lus™ -the most advanced Amiga spreadsheet ever. With even more ime-saving innovations than the iward-winning MaxiPlan, the new tfaxiPlan Plus includes Microsoft Excel ™-like Macros and Utilities.
Vith MaxiPlan Plus and your Imiga you can:
• Open multiple spreadsheets ind graphs
"Link” data from any number of preadsheets
Create a self-running demo or nteractive multiple choice quiz, ncorporating files from word rocessors and paint programs
Automatically create reports uch as invoices and purchase
• rdefs
MaxiPlan Plus™
$ 19900
at your local Amiga software dealer.
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Named the best Amiga spreadsheet of 1986 for its outstanding mouse interfaces, unique pull-down menus and advanced speech capabilities.
Excel is a trade marie ol Mk rosoft Corp
Circle 75 on Reader Servce card
Hors d’oeuvres
Clearing Keyboard Buffer In BASIC
The ability to type ahead on the Amiga is usually a good thing to have, but it can sure mess up the INKEYS statement in a BASIC program. The following subroutine will make sure no old, garbage keypresses are mistaken for a response.
SUB CLEARKEYS STATIC
FOR X = I TO 10
r$ = IN KEYS
NEXT X
ENDSUB
To use. Call ii immediately before the INKEYS statement. Example:
CALL CLEARKEYS WHILE INKEYS = WEND
Margaret Hettinger Lebanon Junction, KY
Faster Downloads
For those of you who have ever tried to download a large file from a BBS or one of the major networks, you may have noticed that the transfer really slows down waiting
for the disk drive to finish writing after each block. This is especially noticeable when using Xmodem, since it uses 128-byte blocks. The solution is to send the file to RAM:. From the CLI you can open another
CLI with NEWCLI. Then load your termi*

nal program from the first CLI. After you finish the download, simply move the front window up out of the way and click in the second CLI window. Then type:
COPY RAM: file name TO drive number
DELETE RAM: file name
With a 512K machine using Micro-Systems Software’s Online!, you can get about 199K in the RAM disk before total machine lockup (I found that out the hard way!). The longer the file, the greater the time savings realized. This technique is especially useful when calling long distance to get that pub- lic-domain program that you just can’t live without.
Ken Baynard
K. I. Sawyer AFB, MI
C Compiler Printouts
1 was having difficulty compiling a program in C when ! Thought how nice it
would be to have a hard copy of the compiler errors to discuss with other programmers. The command format for Manx’s Aztcc C compiler is:
There are two kinds of people in the world: those who own Amiga World T-shirts and those who don’t. To join the prestigious, growing ranks of the former, you need good taste, a little imagination and an idea worth sharing. If this sounds like you, send your recipe to Amiga World Hors d’oeuvres, 80 Elm St., Peterborough, NH 03458. If it’s good enough to be included in our next platter of palate pleasers, you’ll soon be wearing your reward (just remember to send us your T-shirt size).
We hope you enjoy these latest offerings. Be sure to use backups of your original disks for experimenting, and if you find anything here that seems half-baked, let us know.
Cc -option > filename
Thinking this chore would be easy, 1 tried to redirect the console output to the printer by typing:
cc filename > prt:
However, the compiler treated > prt: as a parameter, since options can appear either before or after the name of the C source file that resulted in an error. Due to a quirk of the system, prt: should precede compiler invocation so that:
cc > prt: -option > filename
will properly compile filename and redirect output to the printer and return output to the console after compilation is executed,
Sam Spear Fort Worth, TX
Break Key
Every time I try to download something from a BBS using Micro-Systems’ BBS-PC, I get a message saying “use break to cancel.” Try as I might, I could never find a break key on the keyboard. Well, I'll he damned! Break on the Amiga keyboard is a combination of the ALT and C keys. Many mainframes and network systems use break to stop transmissions or to kill a running program, so it is a good thing to be aware of.
Mike Smithwick Los Altos Hills, CA
Saving Custom Icons
When I discovered how to use the Icon Editor on the Workbench disk. I made useful icons for my Amiga Basic programs.
WARNING: Independent test results have determined that this game is habit forming
Fourth and goal on the two. Ten seconds left and you’re down by five. The roar of the crowd is
deafening as you scan the defense. Something’s not right. You call an audible...that special play you’ve
been saving for a moment like this. You fake a hand off to the fullback up the middle and drop back to pass, but nobody’s open. You roll left, pursued by a 270 pound defensive lineman. Finally, the fullback breaks clear in the end zone. You squeeze a bullet between two defenders as your fullback cuts back to make the catch. The scoreboard lights up as the crowd goes wild...TOUCHDOWN!!
This is GRIDIRON!™, the most realistic football simulation ever developed for a micro- I
computer. GRIDIRON! Is TACKLE football played in real-time. Call a play from the Playbook, I
or design your own using our Play Creation Utility. You control the action with five levels of play, |HpPjM|P I
real time graphics, digitized stereo sound and an unprecedented level of game interaction. U I
Experience the game that’s winning rave reviews from players and critics alike. I
GRIDIRON!, the ultimate football simulator designed to unleash the power of your Amiga. |i4r I
Nothing else comes close.
I low to order: Visit your retailer, or call for direct VISA or Mastercard orders 1-800-992-4009
9208 Burning Tree Road, Bethesda, Maryland 20817 (301) 469-7061
Requires 512K. For one or two players. Soon to be available for the Atari ST
Amiga is a trademark of Commodore-Amiga, Inc. ej 1986 Bethesda Softworks Circle 57 on
- - -
TpnT
I. R.S.
No Sweat... With Money Mentor !
"Keep track of your pennies, and your dollars will take care of themselves." Old. Hut sensible advice, even in today's complex financial environment. Money Mentor*is a breakthrough in personal financial management. It harnesses the awesome power of the .Amiga™ to compute and graph clear reports of your financial situation.
A unique system called "Smart Scrolls" handles a diversity of tedious data entry functions and can save 70% of the typing typically required for entry.
T HI
Money Mentor features:
• 200 budget categories.
• 30 integrated accounts: checking, cash, saving and credit cards.
• Elaborate search routine allows editing of transactions according to your specific guidelines.
• Automatic check printing.
• Automatic Account Balancing.
• Colorful graphic reports illustrating actual versus budgeted amounts.
• (h er 50 reports from which to choose.
This year... get organized with
Money Mentor -
However, when I made an adjustment in the program and re-saved it, my custom icon was replaced with the standard flowchart icon that is created for every Amiga Basic program when it is initially saved.
There are two solutions to this problem. One is to keep an icon library and use the Icon Editor to replace the standard icon with your custom icon.
The other solution is implemented without leaving Amiga Basic, and leaves you with an old (unmodified) copy of the program.
First, get into the intermediate mode and type SAVE OLD. Now you have a new copy of the program with a standard icon and an old copy of the program with your custom icon. All you have to do now is switch the programs.
In die intermediate mode, type:
NAME OLD AS TEMPORARY
NAME your program’s name AS OLD
NAME TEMPORARY AS your programs name
Now you have the new program with the custom icon and the old program with the standard icon, so you can move the old copy somewhere else or into the trash until you know your modifications work correctly.
Derek Buckley
Spokane, WA
Quick CLI
I have an answer to the quick CLI problem. It’s so simple it’s almost not worth mentioning.
I moved my CLI from the System Drawer to the Workbench window itself; now when I open my Workbench, there’s the CLI, This also saves the trouble of typing LOADWB or trying to press CTRL-D at just the right time.
Larry H. Larson Austin, TX
Icon System Solution
Here is a solution to Mr. Raidma’s problem [Help Key, Nov. Dec. ’86, p. 127] which will allow him to keep Amiga Basic in his drawer labeled “BasicWork.”
With Workbench loaded, first click once on the icon for the Basic program. Next, select Info from the Workbench menu by highlighting it and releasing the mouse button. When the Info window comes onto the screen, change the default tool from :AMI-
GABASIC to :B ASIC WORK AM IG ABAS IC. This will direct the icon system to load Amiga Basic from the BasicWork drawer. I tried it and it works for me.
Dr. Michael J. Doyle Bel Air, MD
SAY from BASIC
If you want to use the Say (voice) function, the best method is to store the spoken text in a sequential data fde created with the built-in ED function or any word processor that allows an ASCII save. After the file is created, add the following lines to your Amiga Basic program:
OPEN file name FOR INPUT AS 1 REM file name CREATED USING ED
WHILE NOT EOF(l)
LINE INPUT 1,A$
SAY TRANSLATE$ (A$ )
WEND
CLOSE 1
You can listen to the spoken text before placing it in your program by opening a CLI window and typing SAY -X file name.
Karl Dittman
Salem, MO
Copy of Another Type
Another way to copy a file is by using the Type command under the CLI.
The Type command will display the contents of a file in either ASCII or hex, depending upon the option used and, of course, the file being accessed.
Normally, the return is to the screen or prt:. However, I have discovered that it can also be to a disk or file, and if a file is not specified, one is created.
The format is as follows:
TYPE DF?: file name TO file name
For example, let’s say you have a file on a disk in drive 1 called Amiga World and you want a copy on the disk in drive 0 to he called Mags. In the CLI, you would type the following command string:
TYPE DFLAMIGAWORLD DFOiMAGS
Note that the use of TO is optional.
When you now do a directory search, you should find a new file called MAGS on DF1:.
David Morgan
Robina, Queensland, Australia ¦
Circle 67 on Reader Service card.
Now Look At Word Processing In A Whole New Light.
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ProWrite. All Others Pale By Comparison.
You chose Amigf because you wanted something more. Now you choose your software for the same reason. Which makes choosing Pro- Write word processing a very bright idea.
The Full Spectrum of Capabilities.
ProWrite lets you select more than just a typeface: You get proportionally7 spaced character fonts. Brilliant color. Unsurpassed graphics capabilities. And no surprises, Ifecause what
you see on the screen with ProWrite is a letter-
4
perfect picture of what you’ll see printed on the page from header to footer, right down to the last pixel.
Creative Control: .A Brilliant Stroke. With six pulldown menus, just a click of the mouse or a few ke strokes is all
4
you need to create, delete, copy, alter, move and otherwise manipulate text. Multiple selections create a limitless choice of character fonts, colors, sizes and stvles.
4
Customize everything from a daily diary to an annual report, including color graphics. And with headers and footers always clearly displayed, ProWrite makes even ;idvanced formatting as easy as dragging a mouse.
Ease of Use: Another Bright Idea.
ProWrite delivers more of what you bought Amiga for: Professional output Multi-tasking power.
A "creative edge." You can open up to eight windows at once and perform a variety of editing tasks between them. With
ri ...
ProWrite, vou'll al-
»
wavs know exactlv what vou're
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doing, because you see it done in living color right before vour eves.
4 4
See for yourself what you get with ProWrite. Then, just for fun, take a look at the others and watch them pale by comparison.
New Horizons
First In Personal Productivity And Creativity.
New Horizons Software. Inc. PO Box *13167, Austin. TX 787-15 (512) 329-6215 ProWrite is a trademark of New Horizons Software. Inc. Amiga is a registered trademark of Commodore-Amiga. Inc. Circle 38 on Reader Service card
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256K RAM Expansion
Free Blue Label Shipping
* On all software orders over $ 100 to destinations east of the Rocky Mountains. This is two-day delivery from shipping date.
SOFTWARE
ABSOFT
AC Basic .S239
AC Fortran $ 239
Fortran 77 $ 239
ACCESS SOFTWARE
Leader Board S 31
Tournament Disk , . $ 17
Tenth Frame $ 31
ACCOLADE
Mean 18 ..S 32
ACM
Grade Manager... $ 69 ACTIVISION Borrowed Time ... $ 29 Champ Basketball $ 29
Gamemaker $ 48
Gamestar Titles ... Call
Hacker ...$ 29
Hacker II .$ 29
Little Comp People Call
Mmdshadow $ 29
Music Studio $ 43
Shanghai .S 29
ToneTown . . S 29
ADEPT CompuCuisine.. , . S 29 AEGIS Animator Images . . S 89
Art Disk . $ 42
Draw .....Call
Draw Plus .Call
Images .... . Call
Impact . $ 125
Sonic .....Call
ALIEN
Hyperbase .Call
AMIGA
Lisp .... $ 149
Assembler $ 79
MmdWalker .....$ 44
1. 2 Update $ 14
ANAKIN
Easyl .....Call
BATTERIES INCLUDED ISGUR Portfolio ... $ 129 Paperclip Elite .... $ 89
BIS .... $ 49
DEGAS Elite $ 56
BAUDVILLE Video Vegas 28
BEST SOFTWARE Best Financial .... $ 309 BETHESDA
Gridiron! ..$ 69
BROWN WAGH Zuma Fonts
1,2.or3 ..$ 26
BYTE BY BYTE Financial Plus .... S250
InfoMinder $ 69
CAPILANO
Logic Works $ 159
CENTRAL COAST
DOS 2 DOS $ 45
CHANG LABS Accts Payable .... $ 109 Accts Receivable .. $ 109
AR AP GL $ 219
General Ledger ... $ 109
Payroll ...$ 109
Sales Analysis .... $ 109 COMPUMED
Hacker Package . .
$ 39
Mirror ....
$ 39
COMPUSERVE
Starter Kit .
$ 29
COMPUTER CLUB
Nancy ...
$ 45
COSMI
Super Huey......
S 32
CREATIVE SOLUTIONS
MultiForth .
Call
DARK HORSE
Chess Mate......
S 25
DELTA RESEARCH
Forth ....
Call
DELUXE HELP
Deluxe Help
For Dpaint
$ 20
DIGITAL CREATIONS
Dbuddy .
$ 58
Digital Link
$ 49
Gizmos
$ 39
DIGITAL SOLUTIONS
LPD Series
Call
DISCOVERY
Grabbit ...
$ 25
Exactly! ..
$ 19
Key Genie
$ 39
Marauder II......
$ 39
ELECTRONIC ARTS
Adv. Constr. Kit ‘ .
$ 29
Archon ‘ .
$ 29
Archon 11 *
. Call
Arctic Fox .
$ 29
Auto Duel .
$ 39
Bard’s Tale . . .
$ 39
ChessMasler 2000
S 35
Deluxe Music.....
$ 75
Deluxe Paint......
$ 69
Deluxe Print......
S 69
Deluxe Video
S 69
Dpaint Data Disk
$ 25
Dprint Data Disk . .
S 25
Financial Cookbk ’
S 35
Instant Music.....
S 35
Instant Music Data
S 25
King's Quest .....
. Call
Maxicomm
$ 38
Maxidesk .
$ 52
Maxiplan .
$ 109
Marble Madness . .
S 37
New lech Col. Book $ 17
Ogre.....
S 38
One on One ’
S 29
7 Cities of Geld ' . .
S 29
Sky fox ...
$ 29
Starfleet I .
S 44
Ultima III......
$ 49
Winnie the Pooh . .
S 26
• Gel one of these FREE with th purchase of any other t wo F A products, exceo' Data Disks)
EPYX
Roque ...$ 31
Temples of Apshai $ 31
FIREBIRD
Pawn ....$ 32
FIRST BYTE
First Shapes S 34
Kid Talk ..$ 39
Math Talk .S 39
Speller Bee $ 39
FINALLY SOFTWARE
Dr. Xes ...$ 39
Talker ....S 54
GIMPEL
Lint ......S 85
GO AMIGA
Printer Drivers.....Call
GOLD DISK
Page Setter......$ 109
GRAFOX OF ENGLAND
Logistix ..$ 174
HARVSOFT
Infobase ..S 36
INFOCOM All Titles Available . . Call INOVATRONICS Power Windows ... $ 65
M. Call
INTERACTIVE ANALYTIC Expert System Kit $ 56
Explorer ..$ 39
JAG WARE
Alien Fires .Call
JDK IMAGES
Pro Video CGI____ Call
JENDAY Conv. W Comp . . S 24
JHM
Talking Color Book S 24 KENT ENGINEERING MacroModem ... $ 55
LATTICE
C Compiler ......$ 129
dbC III Library S119
Dos X Compiler ... S199
Make Utility S 99
Panel ....$ 149
Screen Editor $ 89
Text Utilities $ 62
MARK OF THE UNICORN
Hex .... $ 31
MARKSMAN
PHASAR .S 69
MANX Aztec C Comm . . $ 389 Aztec C Devel. . . $ 239
Aztec C Prof......Call
MEGASOFT
A-Copier ..... . . S 29
A-Disk ...S 24
A-Filer ...$ 34
A-Report .$ 34
A-Term ...S 34
MER1DIEN SOFTWARE
Zing ......Call
METACOMCO
Pascal ...S 80
Shell ......Call
Toolkit .....Call
METADIGM
MetaScope ......$ 79
MetaScribe ......$ 73
MetaTools I $ 61
MICRO ILLUSIONS CAD System Call
Discovery Math .. S 31 Discovery Spell . . S 31 MICROPROSE
Silent Service S 31
MICROSMITHS TxEd .....$ 32
MICROSYSTEMS SW
Analyze 2 0.....
. Call
BBS-PC .
S 65
Online ..
. S 47
Scribble .
S 65
Organize
. S 65
MILES
Quintette's ..
Call
MIMETICS
Soundscape ....
. $ 130
NEW HORIZONS
Flow ....
$ 85
ProWnte .
.. Call
NEWTEK
Digi-Pamt
$ 49
DigiView Software
$ 185
NORTHEAST SOFTWARE
Order
. . Call
Publisher
. . Call
MINDSCAPE
Balance oi Power.
. $ 37
Bratacus .
. $ 35
Deja Vu .
$ 37
Hailey Project
$ 37
Keyboard Kadet. .
. $ 30
Mastertype .
$ 30
Racter ..
$ 35
SAT Preparation .
$ 61
Def. Of the Crown
$ 37
S. D.I ....
$ 37
The King of
Chicago......
. S 37
Sinbad ..
S 37
PAR SOFTWARE
Par Home ......
$ 53
Par Real .
S 99
PECAN
Pascal Powersys. .
S 89
PRECISION SOFTWARE
SuperBase......
S114
QUEUE
Educational ....
. Call
S ANTHONY STUDIO
Laser Up!
S 69
Laser Utilities . . .
$ 30
Laser Fonts.....
S 30
SEDONA
Money Mentor . . .
S 78
SOFTW. INSIGHT TECH
GO 64 .
. Call
SOFTWOOD
Mi Amiga File.. . .
S 72
Mi Amiga Ledger.
S 72
SOFTWORKS
Softworks Basic . .
. Call
SPECTRUM HOLOBYTE
Gato ...
Call
SUBLOGIC
Flight Simulator . .
. Call
Jet .....
. Call
TAURUS
Acquisition......
. Call
TDI
Modula II Comm.
Call
Modula II Devel.
$ 115
Modula II Reg .
$ 70
THE OTHER GUYS
AMT ....
S 31
Great States.....
S 31
Keep-Trak ......
S 99
Omega File
S 61
TIGRESS
Diskwik .
$ 39
TRANSTIME Datamat
A-100. 200. 300 Call
TRUE BASIC. INC.
True Basic $ 109
9 Libraries (each). . $ 39 Runtime ..$ 109
UNISON WORLD
Art Gallery I, II
Call
Printmaster Plus. , .
$ 49
VERSASOFT
dBMAN .
$ 99
VIP TECHNOLOGY
Professional......
Call
WORDPERFECT INC.
WordPerfect......
. Call
BOOKS
ADDISON WESLEY
Intuition Manual ., .
$ 24
Hardware.....
S 24
Rom: Libraries
S 34
Rom: Exec
S 34
SYBEX
Progr.’s Guide.....
S 24
HARDWARE
ACCESS ASSOCIATES
Alegra 512K......
S335
AKRON
A-Time .....
$ 59
AMIGA
A1000 CPU ......
. Call
External 35".....
. Call
Monitor ..
. Call
Transformer......
. Cali
Genlock ..
. Call
Modem ..
. Call
ANCHOR AUTOMATION
Omega 80
$ 165
APPLIED VISIONS
Futuresound .....
. Call
ASDG
Mini-Rack .
Call
Memory Banks . . .
Call
BYTE BY BYTE
Pal Jr .....
. Call
Tick .....
. Call
EPSON
JX-80 Ribbons
$ 17
GO AMIGA
Printer Cables
$ 25
Modem Cables .
$ 25
Disk Head Cleaner
S 15
30-Disk Case.....
S 10
Mousepad
S 10
Sony Monitor Cable $ 35
GOLDEN HAWK TECH.
MIDI Gold ..
S 69
JUKI
5510 Color Printer .
S499
MICROBOTICS
Starboard 2MB . . .
$ 599
MAS-Drive 20 ....
Call
MIMETICS
Audio Digitizer ....
S 89
MIDI Interface
S 45
OKIDATA
Okimate 20 Ribbons
; $ 7
SUN-RIZE
Perfect Sound ....
. Call
TECMAR
All Products......
Call
800-BE-AMIGA
Orders
In California: 800-843-2842
Customer Service: 415-322-0686 55
VISA
Delivery subject to product availability.
Prices subject to charge. Circle 26 on Reader Service card.
Send Mail Orders to:
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(Money Order, Cashier's Check, or Qualified P.O. only)
SHIPPING INFO: We ship UPS ground On orders less than 5100. Shipping is S3 per item (limit S6) For software orders over S100. FREE UPS 2nd Day Air shipping. Call for hardware shipping costs. RETURN & REFUND POLICY: All returns must have an RMA- . Call Customer Service and request a RMA- . Defective merchandise under warranty will be repaired or replaced. We do not offer refunds for defective products or for products that do not perform satisfactorily. We make no guarantees for product performance Any money back guarantees must be handled directly with the manufacturer
Amiga is a trademark of Commodore-Amiga
Captain’s
"Captain's Log, October 1.1944.0250 Hours. Fleel submarine USS Hammerhead proceeding Southwest at cruising speed. Our mission: intercept enemy convoy off the coast of Borneo. Disperse and destroy."
Atari 520ST screens shown
irnur •*
"0500 Hours. Sound General Quarters!
Battle stations manned. Preparing tor torpedo run. Gauge Panel OK. Periscope OK. Charts and Attack Plot Board OK. All mechanical systems OK."
"0400 Hours. Lookouts on the bridge.
Target identification party reports one tanker, 6,000 tons, troopship of 10,250 tons, with two Kaibokan-type escorts. Moving into attack position."
"0525 Hours. Torpedo rooms report full tubes forward and aft. Battery at full charge for silent running. We hope water temperature will provide thermal barrier to confuse enemy sonar."
"0600 Hours. We are at final attack position. Convoy moving at 10 knots. Target distance decreasing rapidly... Crash Dive! Escorts have spotted us and are turning to attack! Rig to run silent." « "0700 Hours. Depth charged for one hour. Some minor damage, but repair parties at work. Destroyer propeller noises receding. We'll come to periscope deplh for our return
punch."
"0715 Hours Torpedo tubes 1.2.3 fired.
Two destroyers hit and sinking. One of the enemy's last tankers coming into 'scope view an ideal target position. On my mark... Fire Tube 4! Fire 5!" “Superb” raves Scott May in On Line, “strategic intensity and heart- pounding action have rarely been merged this successfully.” Analog calls it flatly “the best submarine simulation so far.” Compute comments "Silent Service's detail is astonishing.” Join the more than
50,000 computer skippers who have volunteered for Silent Setvice, the naval action tactics simulation from MicroProse.
Silent Service is available lor Commodore 64 ’ 128”''. Amiga'”. Apple II family Atari XL XE, Atari ST. IBM PC PCJr, and Tandy 1000, at a suggested retail price o( S34.95 (Atari ST and Amiga, 539.95).
Commodore. Amiga, Apple. Atari. IBM. And Tandy are registered trademarks of Commodore Electronics. Ltd.. Commodore-Amiga Inc., Apple Computer, Inc.. International Business Machines Corp.. and Tandy Corp., respectively
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BACK IN FRONT..
The Amiga 2000 features a megabyte of memory,
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Amiga 2000 doesn’t make the A1000 obsolete the graphics modes, for instance, are identical but it is a much more versatile, expandable, compatible, and. Ultimately, more powerful machine.
System Description
The Amiga 2000 uses the MC68000 processor. It comes with one megabyte (million bytes) of RAM, one halfheight, internal 3 -inch floppy drive that can store 880K of programs and data, a detachable, 94-key keyboard and a two-button mouse. It also has five Amiga and four IBM PC AT slots for internal expansion. The Amiga 2000 system box is a metal case 6 -inches high. 17 inches wide and 15 %-inches deep. Its footprint the area it occupies on a desk is about the same as the A1000. Unlike the A1000, however, the A2000 keyboard can’t be stored beneath the system unit when not in use.
Like the 1000, the Amiga 2000 has many built-in ports. On the front are the two mouse joystick ports.
On the back are a Centronics- and IBM-compatible parallel port, an IBM-compatible serial port, an RGB video port, stereo sound output and a connector for an external disk drive. Missing are the composite and RF connectors found on the A1000. Composite and RF output are optional on the A2000. The keyboard on the A2000 connects to the front of the machine; the power cord to the back.
Conspicuous by its absence on the Amiga 2000 is the 86-pin edge connector that gave Amiga 1000 owners direct access to the AlOOO's address and data busses. The A2000 has internal expansion slots, so no external bus is provided. Devices that connect to the expansion bus on the A1000 can’t connect to the Amiga 2000. The Amiga 2000, therefore, is not hardware compatible with the A1000. According to Commodore, however, third- party hardware developers will provide expansion boxes for the A1000 that will give A1000 owners access to all peripherals developed for the A2000.
Photo 4. Numeric Keypad. Inscribed on the front of some keys is the function they assume In IBM mode.
You can use standard interface cables with the Amiga 2000 serial and parallel ports; Commodore has changed the pin-outs of these ports to comform to industry standards (See Figure 1 for the pin-outs of the parallel and serial ports).
Drive Configuration
In addition to the one standard disk drive, the Amiga 2000 can mount two more disk drives in the front of the machine. You can put another half-height 3 -inch floppy, or a half-height 3 -inch hard drive next to the standard drive. Below these two, you can mount one 5 -inch half-height drive either hard or floppy or, with a 3 inch mounting bracket, mount another 3 - inch half-height hard or floppy drive. The A2000 has controllers to support two internal 3 -inch floppies.
The A2088 Board the board that provides IBM compatibility has a controller for four 5 -inch floppies.
You will have to supply a controller for any haicl-disk drive mounted in the front of the machine.
In addition to the front-mounted drives and any drives connected to the disk drive port on the back, you can attach other disk drives to the Amiga or IBM side of the system by supplying the appropriate controller board.
The Keyboard
The Amiga 2000 keyboard (Photo 1) has 94 keys (96 on the international version), five more than the AlOOO’s keyboard. The five new keys are on the numeric keypad. In Amiga mode, these keys are left and right parenthesis, slash, asterisk and plus. When working with the A2088 Board, these keys take on the IBM-specific functions inscribed on the front of the keys (Photo
4) . These include Num Lock, Prt Sc, Scroll Lock and other IBM keys. The numeric keypad emulates the functions found on the IBM numeric keypad.
The keyboard is larger than the A1000 keyboard and the keys themselves are shallower. The keys feel springier than on the A1000 they “come back at you” faster than they do with the A1000 keyboard.
Inside the Case
Considering the number of boards and drives you can stick inside the Amiga 2000, you’d expect the machine to have a large power supply: It does. The biggest thing on the motherboard, the power supply (see Photo 2) supplies 200 watts to whatever you load into your machine. It could take a while before you overload this power supply.
Unlike the Amiga 1000, the Amiga 2000 has Kickstart in ROM, specifically Kickstart 1.2, This will save you time when you boot the system. Because the ROM chips are socketed, and because Kickstart 1.2 contains hooks to RAM-resident software patches, Amiga 2000 owners will be able to take advantage of operating system upgrades.
The Amiga 2000 comes with 1 megabyte of RAM standard. Half of that RAM is Amiga chip memory memory accessible by both the 68000 and the Amiga custom chips. Graphics and sound data must be ?
Amiga custom chips
serial port
audio out
RGB port
PC AT slots
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drive
connector
external
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parallel
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Amiga expansion slots
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power
supply
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mouse
connectors
ROM (on daughterboard)
keyboard
connector
CPU slot
Photo 5. Amiga 2000 motherboard. The mount for the power supply and Internal drives normally covers the right half of the board.
Iii chip memory before it can be used by the system. The other 512K is fast memory; so called because the custom chips can’t access this memory. The 68000 can access fast memory at full speed. AmigaDOS automatically loads programs directly into fast RAM (if there is any available) and reserves chip memory for graphics and sound. This increases the efficiency of the svstem.
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The 512K of chip memory is built into the Amiga 2000 motherboard. The fast memory is contained on an autoconfig memory board that plugs into a 100-pin expansion slot.
The A2000 system has a built-in clock calendar.
Unlike the clock in the A1000, however, this clock has a battery backup. You will no longer have to set the time and date on powerup. One thing missing on the A2000 that is standard on the A1000 is composite video-out. Commodore has removed composite video-out from the motherboard entirely. Instead, Commodore provides a video slot that you can fill with either an NTSC coder for North America or a PAL coder for Europe. Both coder boards will be available from Commodore and will include RF signals for use with Tvs and VCRs. Hopefully, the composite signal from these boards (or from third-party hardware boards) will be superior to that supplied by the A1000, which hasn’t won the hearts of video professionals.
Expansion Architecture
The biggest difference between the A1000 and the A2000, and the raison d'etre of the A2000, is the presence of slots on the A2000 motherboard (Photo 5). Commodore has made the Amiga system expandable internally, and provided as well a unique and ingenious method for running MS-DOS software on the Amiga.
Perhaps the most interesting slot on the motherboard is the CPU slot. This 86-pin slot has the same unbuffered access to the Amiga data and address busses as the MC 68000. You could use this slot to let another processor take over the Amiga or work in parallel with the 68000. This is the natural place to put a 68020 68881 board to upgrade the Amiga to a 32-bit processor.
The inclusion of the CPU slot reflects Commodore’s intention to make the A2000 a multitasking, multiprocessor. Multi-DOS machine. In addition to the CPU and the video slots mentioned earlier, the A2000 has live Zorro-like expansion slots on the Amiga motherboard. These slots are 100-pin, they support autoconfig, and they do have buffered access to the 68000 data and address busses; but. They arc not totally compatible with the Zorro 100-pin autoconfig standard published earlier by Commodore. They conform to the revised Zorro specifications announced at the Monterey developers conference last fall. There are two differences: First, the form factor the physical size and shape of the boards is different; Zorro boards arc square, A2000 boards rectangular. More importantly, some of the lines have been relocated in the slots (Figure 2). In addition to resizing, this means that some Zorro boards will have to be rewired to work in the A2000.
PC slots
The A2000 also has a four-slot IBM PC AT bus system on the motherboard.. .sort of. Two of the slots are 1 libit AT slots; the other two are eight-bit XT slots. If you look closely at these XT slots, however, you'll see that all the lines are in place to convert these slots into AT slots (see Photo 5). All you (or your dealer or Commodore) have to do is solder the AT-specific part of the
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Figure 1.
Simplified block diagram of the Amiga 2000 system.
Pinouts of the Amiga 2000 parallel and serial ports.
Connector in place to convert the XT slots into full- fledged AT slots.
As mentioned earlier, the A2088 Board available for the Amiga 2000 provides IBM PC XT compatibility on a board. Why, then, did Commodore provide a PC AT bus system, two PC AT slots, and the ability to expand the other slots to AT slots? Commodore has indicated that they plan to provide an AT-compatible board at some future date.
If this is so, then why didn’t Commodore make all four slots AT compatible at once, and save themselves and users the trouble of upgrading to AT slots in the future? The problem is that, although XT cards work in AT slots, they don’t always fit into AT slots. Many XT cards overhang so much that they don't clear the AT slot extension. To make certain that all current XT cards work in the A2000, Commodore left the extension off two of the AT slots. It’s a neat solution to the problem of fitting enough Amiga, XT and AT slots into a machine that can fit easily on a desktop.
Bridging the Gap
Surprisingly, the five Amiga slots and four IBM slots don’t add up to nine usable slots; they add up to seven. This is due to the way the slots are laid out on the motherboard (Figure 3). Looking from the front, the four IBM slots are in the back-left of the machine. The Amiga slots are towards the front and the right. Note well, however, that the two rightmost IBM slots are aligned with the two leftmost Amiga slots. This alignment lets specially-constructed cards sit in an Amiga slot and a PC slot at the same time, providing a bridge
between the two systems. The A2088 Board is an exam-
.
Pie of such a bridge card. It plugs into both an Amiga and a PC slot, thus providing a connection between the Amiga bus system and the PC AT bus system. The connection is not achieved through physical juncture of the two busses, but rather through the sharing of memory accessible to both bus systems.
The fact that two slots of each type arc aligned means increased flexibility in how you configure your Amiga 2000 system. With the A2088 Board in the leftmost Amiga slot (and the aligned IBM slot), you still have four unused Amiga slots and two unused IBM slots. If you put the A2088 Board into the next Amiga slot to the right, with the board’s IBM connector in the rightmost IBM slot, you will have three unused Amiga slots and three unused IBM slots. Overlapping two slots allowed Commodore to give you great flexibility in configuring your system. Of course, if you don’t install an A2088 Board, you have five unused Amiga slots at your disposal.
Amiga 2000 Peripheral Boards
The A2088 Board (covered in detail in the next story) and the composite video boards mentioned earlier are not the only significant peripherals available for the A2000. Commodore has two memory-expansion boards for the A2000 and a DMA hard-disk controller that supports both ST506 and SCSI (Small Computer System Interface) devices. Commodore is also offering a new high-persistence monitor for both the A1000 and the A2000. This monitor is designed to eliminate the flicker associated with using the Amiga in interlaced mode.
The two memory boards available for the Amiga 2000 use two different kinds of chips: the A2050 Two- ?
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Figure 2. Pinout of the Amiga 2000 100*pln expansion slots.
512K Chip Hewwy
Reserved
8 Megabyte Henory Space For Auto-Configuration Expansion Devices
Reserved
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Pin Function
Fin Function
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A19
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56
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76
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96
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57
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77
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97
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18
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38
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58
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78
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98
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79
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99
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188
as
: updated by Amga
FIGURES DRAWN BY ROGER GOODE
Amiga 2000 Specifications
Price (preliminary)
Under Si,500
Basic System
A2000 CPU box with 200-watt power supply, keyboard, clock calendar with battery backup and an optomechanical, two-button mouse are standard. AmigaDOS Workbench disk and Extras disk with Amiga Basic are standard software.
CPU
MC68000 running at 7.14 Mhz. Three custom chips handle video display (graphics and animation), sound and DMA.
Standard Memory
One megabyte RAM divided into 512K chip (graphics and sound) memory and 512K fast memory. Expandable to 8.5 megabytes.
256K ROM contains operating system kernal Kickstart VI.2.
1 .1
jKi
Amiga 2000 system box (front). Note the spaces reserved for the internal drives. The ports along the bottom are, from left to right, the keyboard connector, mouse port 1 and mouse port 2.
Amiga 2000 system box (rear). At far left is the cut out for the video sloL Across the top, left to right, are the power switch, power plug and fan. Across the bottom are the RGB port, parallel port, dlsk-drive port, stereo-audio connectors and serial port On the far right are cut outs for connectors to boards In the seven expansion slots. Above the serial port are two more cut outs for boards that have multiple connectors.
Keyboard
Detached, 94 keys (96 on international versions). Includes 10 function keys, full cursor control and IBM-tvpe numeric keypad. Operating system vU2 supports different language key maps.
Disk Drives
One 3-J£* half-height floppy, built-in; 880K formatted capacity. One additional Amiga floppy drive can be controlled internally. Mounting for a third internal drive. Additional internal drives or hard disks require additional controllers.
Ports
Centronics IBM parallel, RS-232 serial, RGB port analog and digital), external disk drive port for two additional Amiga floppies, two audio ports and two mouse controller ports.
Slots
86-pin CPU slot, video slot, five Amiga 100-pin expansion slots and four IBM PC AT (16-bit) slots.
Video Display
Text:
60 or 80 columns x 25 lines; text is graphics-generated. Graphics:
320 x 200 pixels: up to 32 out of 4,096 colors 640 x 200: up to 16 out of 4,096 colors 320 x 400: interlaced, up to 32 out of 4,096 colors 640 x 400: interlaced, up to 16 out of 4,096 colors
In each mode, the palette can he switched on the scanline (hold and modify) so all 4,096 colors can appear on screen at once.
Sound
Four independent sound channels output as two stereo channels. Each sound channel consists of an eight-bit digital analog converter and a low-pass filter.
Optio?ial from Commodore:
• A2002 Color Monitor, RGB analog, RGB digital, composite. Price not available.
+ A2080 Color Monitor (under $ 500). High-persistance version of A2002.
+ A1Q10 External Floppy Drive. 3-J(, inch. Price not available.
* A1020 External Floppy Drive. 5-% inch. Price not available.
+ A1680 Amiga Modem. 1200 baud, Hayes compatible. Price not available.
+ A2088 Board (under $ 500). IBM PC XT compatibility on a board, with 512K RAM.
• A2094 Hard Disk SCSI Controller. Controls two ST506 drives and seven SCSI devices. Price not available.
+ A2050 Two-Megabyte RAM expansion. Also available; 512K. Version, Price not available.
A2058 Eight-Megabyte RAM expansion. Also available; 4M version. Price not available,
• A2060 Video RF Modulator Board (under SI 00). Provides NTSC composite and RF out.
+ A2Q61 Video RF Modulator Board (under $ 100) Provides PAL composite and RF out, ?
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Megabyte Board uses 256K*bii RAM chips; the A2058 Eight-Megabyte Board uses the newer (and more expensive) 1 Mega-bit RAM chips. Both boards are autocon- fig, both have zero-wait state memory, and both are available in smaller memory sizes. If you buy a board that isn’t filled to capacity, you can buy chips and populate the board yourself when you need the extra memory.
Hard Disk and Scuzzy
The A2094 Hard Disk SCSI Controller Board (Photo 3) is designed to give the Amiga high-speed access to external hard disks and SCSI (commonly called “Scuzzy”) devices. The board uses a custom VLSI DMA (Direct Memory Access) controller the 8727 to move information quickly between the board and the Amiga’s memory. The board uses a Z-80 microprocessor to control a pair of ST506 hard disks. The SCSI interface is provided by the Western Digital WD33C93. This chip can be controlled by either the Z-80 or the Amiga 68000, with the default being the 68000.
The 8727 DMA controller is a Commodore custom chip that features a 64-byte FIFO (First In, First Out) real-time buffer. This buffer allows real-time data transfer between the controllers on the board and the Amiga's memory without having the DMA chip hold the system bus for an entire sector (512 bytes) transfer. Wait states caused by DMA transfer are therefore kept to a minimum.
The DMA controller uses 3 address counters accessible by the Amiga CPU to determine where to initiate data transfer (either to or from memory)- Once DMA begins, these counters are incremented automatically. DMA is initiated with a 12-byte command block sent to the DMA controller by the Amiga system.
Using the DMA controller, the ST506 hard disk interface can transfer data to the Amiga at 1.6 microseconds byte (687K-bytcs second). Data transfer from the SCSI controller is even faster 800 nanoseconds byte
(1. 25Mbytes second). Translating these values into Mbits second, the most common unit for expressing data-transfer rates, you find that transfer from the ST506 controller can reach 5 Mbits second; transfer from the SCSI interface can hit 10 Mbits second.
The SCSI interface is an ANSI X3T9.2-compatible interface that can control seven SCSI devices numbered 0 through 6. Device number 7 is the SCSI interface itself. The interface supports two connectors; an industry standard 50-pin connector and a Macintosh Plus- compatible D-25 connector. The Amiga SCSI port is thus hardware compatible with the Mac Plus SCSI port.
The ST506 controller handles one or two hard drives with up to eight recording surfaces per drive and up to 2,048 cylinders (tracks) per head. The ST506 controller doesn’t support 16-head drives. The Z-80 chip that is the brains of the ST506 controller has available 2K bytes RAM to buffer commands from the Amiga. The intelligence of the controller is contained in 8K PROM (Programmable Read-Only Memory) that stores the routines that drive the Z-80, and IK RAM for the storage of variables needed by the controlling routines.
In addition to the A2088 Board, memory boards and Hard Disk SCSI Controller Board, Commodore and third parties are developing other peripherals for the slots in the Amiga 2000. At the nondisclosure preview provided by Commodore, they showed a Computer System Associates 68020 68881 board running in the Amiga 2000. CSA has resized their board to match the A2000 form factor; they are also making the necessary- electronic changes to conform to the alterations in the Zorro electronics. Since the changes to the board weren’t completed at the time of the press demonstration (early December 1986), the CSA board needed three jumpers into the CPU slot to work. With that slight modification, the board seemed to work perfectly. It computed and displayed a Mandelbrot image on the Amiga in a couple of minutes. (Note: The CSA 68020 board demonstrated goes into an expansion slot, not the CPU slot: The 68020, with a 14-MHz clock, takes control of the system simply by answering bus requests faster than the 68000 can.) Other companies are making adjustments in their Zorro boards and expansion boxes to conform to the A2000 revised-Zorro slots.
Conclusion
With the A2000, Commodore has extended the Amiga architecture to include internal slots and, optionally. IBM compatiblity, while maintaining software compatibility with the Amiga 1000. On the negative side, Commodore has failed to address the interlace flicker problem directly (although the high-persistence monitor is a big help) and has revised the Zorro expansion specification. This is bound to confuse buyers and to confound third-party hardware makers who have invested lots of time and money in supporting the Zorro standard. It is too early to tell how many manufacturers will support the A2000 expansion standard or how many may drop out of the Amiga market altogether. The third-party hardware situation will take time to sort itself out.
On the positive side, the Amiga 2000 is far superior to the A1000. In many respects, especially concerning standard memory and internal expansion, it is the machine the A1000 should have been. While maintaining software compatibility, Commodore has stretched the horizons of the Amiga architecture while giving Amiga 2000 owners a window literally to other processors and operating systems. With a price for the base unit of under $ 1,500, the Amiga 2000 is an excellent buy. Fully configured, it is perhaps the most powerful and versatile personal computer you can buy.H
Editor's note: This article and the piece on the Janus system that follows is based upon a six-hour meeting with Commodore marketing and engineering personnel, numerous follow-up plume calls and meetings, and about three days of hands-on, unsupervised experience with the A2000 and various peripherals, Due to deadline constraints, some of the information supplied by Commodore could not be verified independently. We will follow this description of the Amiga 2000 and the Janus hardware and software with further details, clarifications and corrections as needed.
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Between Two Worlds: The A2088 Board
Commodore’s plug-in bridge between the world of Amiga and the world of the IBM PC.
By Bob Ryan
n the Roman pantheon, Janus was a two-faced god who guarded gates and doorways his unique anatomical arrangement let him see in two directions at once. The Janus system incorporated into the A2088 Board (and the Amiga Sidecar) is also the guardian of a gateway: The gateway between the Amiga and the IBM PC.
The A2088 Board is a peripheral board that sits in one of the special “bridge” slots on the Amiga 2000 motherboard. The A2088 Board has two edge connectors one connects the board to the Amiga bus system via an Amiga expansion slot; the other connects the board to the IBM PC AT slot system. Thus, the A2088 Board contains the physical and logical link between the Amiga and the IBM world.
A2088 Hardware
More than a simple connector, the A2088 Board is a full-fledged computer system. It is an IBM PC XT computer on a card. It has an Intel 8088 microprocessor running at 4.77 Mhz, an IBM-compatible ROM BIOS (Basic Input Output System), a floppy-disk controller for four IBM-type 5J 4" disk drives, up to 512K RAM (256K standard) for MS-DOS software and a socket for an optional 8087 math coprocessor. In addition, the A2088 Board has a custom PC Multifunction chip that emulates many of the hardware aspects of the IBM PC XT. These include interrupt control, DMA and the generation of PC-specific timing signals. The ROM BIOS is a product of Phoenix Technologies, the leading maker of PC-compatible BIOS, and Commodore. Commodore customized the PC BIOS slightly to incorporate handshaking between the PC and the Amiga.
The A2088 Board also contains an area that is controlled by the Amiga. Two large custom chips on the board contain the Janus interface and the Amiga controller for the actual physical connections between the Amiga and the XT-on-a-board. This physical connection takes place in an area of memory common to both the
PC and the Amiga; an area called the dual-port RAM. Common Access
The A2088 Board has 128K of dual-port RAM, so called because its address and data busses are connected to both the Amiga side and the IBM side of the board (with access by one system or the other controlled by flip-flops). It is through dual-port RAM that information passes between the two systems. This is how the Amiga controls the IBM PC XT in the A2088 Board: To the Amiga, the entire IBM PC XT system is just another AmigaDOS application running in a wfindow on the Amiga screen.
The 128K dual-port RAM is divided into three major sections. The largest is a 64K buffer used by the Amiga to transfer data between the two systems. Using this buffer, AmigaDOS can use a hard disk connected to the IBM bus system. The PC, however, can’t use hard disks on the Amiga side of the system. The PC doesn’t have the built-in intelligence to control the Janus interface.
The second major chunk of the dual-port RAM is critical to running IBM-PC programs in an Amiga window. In this area are the I O registers, the monochrome video RAM, the color video RAM and the CRT registers of the PC. Also here is an eight-bit interrupt-type register that tells the Amiga what type of interrupt has occurred on the IBM side. To an application running on the IBM side, everything seems normal: The PC thinks it is writing to its screen memory and thinks it is reading its keyboard register. In fact, the PC side is writing to memory in dual-port RAM and reading a pseudo keyboard register in dual-port RAM. Once the information is in dual-port RAM, it can be accessed and massaged by the Amiga to produce output on the Amiga screen and input from the Amiga keyboard. This “massaging” function is performed by a library of routines called the janus.library. The link library for C is called jlib.lib.
Three copies of the PC registers and display memory exist in dual-port RAM; the original, as accessed by the PC side, and two “shadows” of the same information that is automatically created by the Janus controller located on the A2088 Board.
These areas of shadow RAM exist because the Amiga accesses information from the IBM system in three different ways, depending upon what the information is. Sometimes, the Amiga is looking for information in byte form; sometimes in word form (the 8088 and the 68000 have a different order of bytes in their words); and sometimes as graphics information. The Janus system automatically makes three copies of the information from the PC side and then directs access of the Janus routines to the appropriate shadow RAM. (For an example of how shadowing makes life easier for the Amiga, see the sidebar entitled “How the Amiga 2000 Creates an IBM Medium-R.es Display”)
The Amiga addresses the different shadow areas by applying an offset to a base address. Byte access has an offset of zero; the Amiga reads byte-sized information from the same physical locations where the PC writes it. The address of the word-access memory is offset $ 20000 from the byte area; graphics access is $ 40000 above the byte-access area. The Amiga-accessible I O registers are offset $ 60000 above byte-access memory. Although very little of the possible memory between these offsets is actually used, the A2088 Board does take a big chunk of contiguous memory out of the Amiga memory map. In fact, the A2088 Board reserves two megabytes of memory for itself during the autoconfiguration process. With an A2088 Board installed, your Amiga is “limited” to 6.5 megabytes of RAM, of which only 6 megabytes can be autoconfig expansion RAM.
The third major area of dual-port RAM is called
MB
JANUS
interface
controller
AMIGA bus connector
The A2088 Board is an IBM PC XT- compatible computer on a card.
Parameter RAM. This area acts as the software interface control for the Janus system. It has some special registers that control runtime handshaking between the two systems. This handshaking is important both at pow- erup (see the sidebar “Two-Fisted Powerup”) and while a PC application is running to keep both systems from accessing the dual-port RAM at the same time. Parameter RAM contains definitions to all the PC software interrupts that the Janus system recognizes. It also has pointers to the different data structures in other areas of the dual-port RAM.
A2088 Software
All the intelligence to control the flow of information between the PC XT and the Amiga is on the Amiga side of the interface, either built into the A2088 Board or in the Janus library. To run PC software, the Amiga runs a task called the PCWindow task.
PC Window is like any other Amiga program. It uses Intuition to create a resizable screen and pull down ?
MODULA-2
the successor to Pascal
FULL inlerface to ROM Kernel. Intuition. Workbench and AnngaDos Smart linker lor greatly reduced code size
Supports real numbers and transcendental functions ie sin. Cos. Tan, arctan, exp, In. Log, power, sqrt 3d graphics and multi-tasking demos
CODE statement for assembly code Error lister will locate anc identify all errors in source code Smg e character PO supported No royalties or copy protection Phone and network customer Support provided 350-page manual
True native code implementation (Not UCSD p-Code or M-code) Sophisticated multi-pass compiler allows forward relerences and code
optimization
ReallnOul. LonglnOut. InOut. Strings Storage Terminal Streams MathLibO and all standard modules
Works with single floppy.'512K RAM
Pascal and Modula-2 source code are nearly identical Modula-2 should be thoughl ol as an enhanced superset of Pascal Prolessor Niklaus Wirtn (the creator ot Pascal) designed Modula-2 to replace Pascal
Added features ol Modula-
2 not found in Pascal
Dynamic strings that may be any size
Multi-iaskmg is supported Procedure variables Module version control Programmer delmable scope ol objects
Open array parameters (VAR r ARRAY OF REALS.)
Began! Type transfer functions
CASE nas an ELSE and may contain subranges
Programs may be broken up into Modules for separate compilation
Machine level interface Bit-wise operators Direct port and Memory access Absolute addressing Interrupt structure
Ramdisk Benchmarks (secs)
Compile
Link
Execute
Optomized
Size
Sieve of Eratosihenes
61
49
42
1257 bytes
Float
6 7
72
86
3944 bytes
Calc
5 7
48
36
1736 bytes
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MODULE Sieve;
MODULE Float.
CONST Size = 8190,
FROM MathLibO IMPORT sin. In. E*p.
TYPE FlagRange = [O.Size],
sqrt, arctan.
FlagSet - SET OF FlagRange.
VAR x.y REAL, i CARDINAL.
VAR Flags; FlagSet,
BEGIN rST-.SA-.SS-*)
i FlagRange.
X ; = 1.0.
Prime, k, Count, Iter CARDINAL,
FOR i:= 1 TO 1000 DO
BEGIN fSS-.SR-.SA- ')
y:= sin (x). Yr- In (x). Y = exp (x);
FOR Iter- 1 TO 10 DO
y - sqrt (x) y - arctan (x).
Caunt:= 0.
X - x - 0.01.
Flags - FiagSetO. (’ empty set ')
END.
FOR i = 0 TO Size DO
END float
IF (i IN Flags) THEN
Prime = (i * 2) • 3. K i • Prime
WHILE k Size DO
MODULE calc;
INCL (Flags, k).
VAR a.b.C. REAL. N. i CARDINAL.
K: - k - Pnme.
BEGIN (-ST-.SA-SS--)
END.
N:= 5000.
Ccunt Count - 1
a - 2 71828; b - 3 14159; c * 10
END
FOR i:= 1 TO n DO
END.
C - c'a, c c’b. C c a. C c b
END.
END
END Sieve
END calc
Product History
The Tdl Modula-2 compiler has been running on the Pinnacle supermicro (Aug
84) . Atari ST (Aug. 85) and will soon appear on the Macintosh and UNIX in the 4th Qtr. 86
Regular Version $ 89.95 Developer's Version S149.95 Commercia! Version $ 299.95
The regular version contains all the features listed above The developer s version contains additional Amiga modules, macros and demonstration programs - a symbol file decoder - link and load lile disassemblers * a source tile cross relerencer
- the kcrmit file transfer utility - a Modula-2 CLI - modules for IFF and ILBM The commercial version contains all of the Amiga module source files.
Other Modula-2 Products
Kermit - Contains lull source plus $ 15 connect time to CompuServe $ 29 95
Examples - Many of the C programs from ROM Kernel and Intuition
translated into Modula-2. $ 24 95
GRID - Sophisticated multi-key Me access method with over
30 procedures to access variable length records. $ 49 95
Tdl
SOFTWARE, INC.
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menus, and it only goes into action when its polling procedure detects an action that requires its attention.
Like other Amiga tasks, this action could be the user clicking the mouse. Unlike common Amiga tasks, however, PCWindow must also respond to what is happening on the PC side of the A2088 Board and take action when needed (specifically, when the PC changes its display screen or reads its keyboard). Optionally, you can have the PC control the Amiga parallel port.
When an IBM-PC program changes the information it is displaying on the screen, it writes the new information to a specific area of memory. In a PC, a video processor scans this memory and uses the data there to update the screen. When a PC program running on the A2088 Board writes to screen memory (located in dualport RAM), it triggers a level 2 interrupt on the Amiga side. The PCWindow task then checks the interrupt- type register in dual-port RAM to see what caused the interrupt. (The PC will interrupt the Amiga when one of eight conditions occurs: The PC reads the keyboard, writes to monochrome video RAM, writes to color video RAM, accesses the monochrome CRT registers, accesses the color CRT registers, accesses LPT1, accesses CQM1, or experiences a software interrupt.)
If the interrupt is something the Amiga must handle, it does; otherwise, it ignores the interrupt.
In the above example, where the interrupt is triggered by the PC writing to its screen memory, the PCWindow task can’t ignore the interrupt since it needs to keep its window current with what's happening inside the PC. The PCWindow task checks the PC display memory in dual-port RAM against a copy of this memory that it keeps in Amiga memory. If a change has occurred, Pcwindow updates its output window to reflect the change on the IBM side. It also updates its copy of the IBM screen memory. Going the other way, when the PC is looking for keyboard input, it sends an interrupt to the Amiga. PCWindow handles the interrupt and passes a character along to the PC side (in PC-keyboard-specific serial form) after reading the Amiga keyboard. Then, via an interrupt to the PC side, PCWindows tells the PC that it has completed transferring the character. Then, both computers go on their merry ways until the PC application again changes its screen memory or asks for keyboard entry.
PC Operations
The Amiga software that comes with the A2088 Board contains the Janus library and allows you to run MS- DOS programs in either monochrome or color-graphics mode. MS-DOS programs come up in an Amiga window that you can resize like any window. You can also eliminate the border around the window and change the default colors.
PC programs in text mode update the Amiga window a little slower than they would a PC screen. Many times, the Amiga will scroll two or three lines at a time to keep up with the PC program. Graphics applications on the A2088 Board are not appreciably slowed by having the display routed through an Amiga window.
The A2088 Board comes with both Amiga and PC *
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Progressive Peripherals and Software Inc.,
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Precision
Software
First in a new generation of database systems, Superbase Personal benefits from the latest ideas in ease ot use - pull down menus, multiple windows, poinl-to-click selections - as well as the full power of relational database management.
Easy to set up
Type in your field names, add details like length or date style. With the easy-to-understand menu selections and control panels, you can create a database in minutes. What’s more, you can alter your formats at any time without disturbing the data already held on file.
Manage your data
Superbase displays your data in easy-to-read lables or page by page in Form view. There's practically no limit to the number of fields in a record, but you have full control over what you choose to show. Select fields, select index, then use VCR style controls to view your data - fast forward, rewind, pause or stop - it’s as easy as playing a tape. A unique Fitter system lets you select ano work with any category of records from your file.
Working power
Oefine reports and related queries across multiple files, with multiple sort levels if you need them. Import data from other databases or applications. Export data to your word processor or join several files to form a new database. The advanced B+ tree file structure and disk buffering ensure high performance - Superbase reads a typical name and address record in iess than three hundredths of a second.
The Picture Database
Use Superbase’s special picture reference facility and powerful data handling to create a unique picture data library application. You can even run an automatic slide show.
Utilities. On the Amiga side, it comes with software that allows you to let the A2088 Board take exclusive control of the Amiga parallel port. In addition, you get a Preferences program that lets you determine which areas of the PC ROM space you want to include in dual-port RAM. Some PC graphics boards, such as the Hercules color board, use the same ROM space as the IBM CGA that is emulated by the Janus system. The Hercules board, however, supports a horizontal resolution (720 pixels) that can’t be duplicated by the Amiga, which is limited to 640 pixels. If you plug a Hercules card into the AT bus system on the Amiga, you’ll have to use the PC Preferences program to turn off the emulation of PC ROM area $ B800Q in the dual-port RAM. This area is the one used by both the IBM CGA and the Hercules board. You will then have to hook up a separate monitor to the Hercules board to see the Hercules display.
The A2088 Board comes with MS DOS 3.2. On the disk, you get a utility called Adisk that lets you format a partition on an MS-DOS disk under AmigaDOS. Then, using the Djmount command from AmigaDOS, you can get AmigaDOS to recognize and use the partition on the MS-DOS disk, even when MS DOS isn’t booted. In
effect, if you have a hard disk on the IBM side of the Janus interface, you can use part of it under AmigaDOS.
At the time I saw the A2088 Board, Commodore hadn't finalized a file-transfer technique for moving information between MS DOS and AmigaDOS. Two techniques are under consideration. One is to pass an MS-DOS pathname to the A2088 Board under AmigaDOS and to then intercept the result of the action that MS-DOS takes. This will only work if there are no concurrent requests for MS DOS by the PC system. The second technique under consideration is to emulate the MS-DOS filing system in an AmigaDOS task. This would make the file-transfer program rather large, but it could let you transfer data without having MS DOS active. Commodore promises some type of file-transfer system with the release of the A2088 Board, in addition to a cut-and-paste function between Amiga and PC windows.
Beyond MS DOS
The important thing to remember about the A2088 Board is that it isn’t necessary to run MS DOS on the board to make use of the 8088 processor. At the pre-
Two-Fisted Powerup
When power is supplied to an Amiga 2000 system that contains an A2088 Board, the sequence of events is carefully choreographed by the Amiga to ensure that the PC is brought under the Amiga’s control. Understanding the powerup procedure is important in understanding how the Amiga interacts with the PC and how AmigaDOS can access a partition on the IBM side of the system.
At powerup, the A2088 Board is reset by the Amiga and it stays that way until the Amiga has executed Binddrivers, loaded janus.library, and loaded Workbench. The Amiga then releases the PC from reset and waits. When reset is released, the PC starts its powerup procedure. The Amiga knows that PC powerup is complete when it detects memory refresh on the PC side.
At this point, the PC BIOS begins to poll a special location in dual-port RAM for permission to precede. This polling procedure is one of the modifications that Commodore made to the Phoenix PC BIOS ROM.
Having detected memory refresh on the PC side, and knowing that die PC is in a wait state, the Amiga then downloads the file PC.Boot into the $ E0000 page of PC memory in dual-port RAM. The PC.Boot file contains the PC side of an AmigaDOS hard disk driver. Once the Amiga has installed its driver in the PC ROM, it sends a signal to the PC to proceed with its boot process. The Amiga then waits for confirmation that booting is complete.
When the PC receives the signal from the Amiga, it continues with its boot procedure by initiating its ROM search. In a PC, the programs that drive peripheral
boards are contained in ROM on the board. During ROM search, the PC incorporates these ROM routines into its memory map, starting with the lowest ROM address and proceeding to the highest. In an IBM system, hard disk controllers normally reside at location SC8000 in memory. When the PC ROM search reaches this location, it triggers the execution of an initialization routine. This routine modifies the vector for interrupt $ 13, which is triggered by a disk access. Normally, this vector points to the BIOS services for floppy-disk drives. The hard-disk initialization routine at $ C8000 modifies the vector so that it points to the hard-disk controller located just above the initialization routine.
As the PC ROM search continues, it encounters the code at $ E00G0 that was placed there by the Amiga while the PC was in a wait state. This code modifies the vector for interrupt $ 13 once again, so that it points to a place above SE0000. Thus, since the Amiga code above SE00O0 is the first invoked by a request for disk services on the PC side, the Amiga can redirect the results of disk access from the PC to the 64K buffer in dual-port RAM. The Amiga can even initiate disk services by sending an interrupt $ 13 to the PC side. This is how AmigaDOS controls disk hardware on the PC side of the A2088 Board.
Once the initialization routine at $ EOOO() is finished, it sends a signal to the Amiga confirming that the PC ROM search is done. The PC is now ready to run MS DOS, and the Amiga is ready to access the PC through an Amiga window. The two systems are ready to get to work.D
• LOGiSTiX
Spreadsheei»Tlme ManagemenfDatabase•
LOGiSTiX is a powerful spreadsheet. Its 2048 row by 1024 column worksheet is large enough to handle serious business applications. LOGiSTiX takes advantage of the Amiga’s unique multi-tasking ability and can even use the Amiga's interlace mode to display 44 rows of your worksheet in 640 * 400 resolution mode. That's powerful!
LOGiSTiX is a powerful database that lets you store, sort, find and edit data like a stand-alone database does. The true power of the LOGiSTiX database is its ability to integrate with the spreadsheet, graphics, and time and project management functions. LOGiSTiX can also read dBase, ASCII, CSV and many other file formats (such as Lotus and Supercalc), so data compatibility won't be a problem. LOGiSTiX is fully integrated software!
LOGiSTiX is a powerful time and project manager. You don't have to be a "PERT master” to learn LOGiSTiX. Simply decide on your time frame, break down your job into tasks, decide which ones need to be completed first and which tasks get done next. Then LOGiSTiX can take into account job dependencies, calculate Critical Path, and display float. You have complete control over your planning. You can plan your schedule in time units from half hours to years, while completely tied into your worksheet.
It's easy to construct Gantt charts and print them out to most popular printers and plotters with sideways print abilities). The LOGiSTiX timesheet can be fully integrated with cash flow projections, income statements, etc., all in the same worksheet area so you can see the effect of time and schedule changes on your bottom line. No other project planning program offers you so much flexibility, letting you plan your time, resources and money so easily.
LOGiSTiX is powerful color graphics. It’s easy to translate complex facts and figures into understandable presentation quality graphs. Your on-screen graphs take full advantage of the Amiga’s amazing graphics capabilities, and can also be output to the Polaroid Palette system for super high-res text and or graph slides and transparencies.
LOGISTIX
WHEN QUALITY COUNTS!
Th» !nfcgrgf d Soffwora 5yricm ihet
- dda The Tau-lh Dimension of TIME
ST A IN BUSINESS 50 SINCE THE S?R£ ADSHEF. ’
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LOGiSTiX and many other innovative products are now available at your favorite dealer, or directly from Progressive Peripherals and Software, Inc. LOGISTIX is also available for IBM PC and compatibles, Atari 1040 ST and the HP-150.
464 XALAMATH STREET DENVER. COLORADO 80204 303-825-4144 TELEX: 888B37
LOGiSTiX, Amiga. Atari 1040 ST, dBase, Lotus, IBM. HP-150, and SuperCalc are registered trademarks of Graloxol England.Commodore Amiga Inc Atari Inc.. Ashton-Tate Corp., Lotus Development Corp., International Business Machines, Hewlett Packard Corp., and Sorcim IUS Inc., respectively
Circle 160 on Reader Service card.
How the Amiga Creates An IBM Medium-Res Display
The screen memory of an IBM medium-res display stores four pixels per byte. Each pixel is defined by two bits and can therefore have one of four different values. These four values correspond to the four colors a pixel can have in an IBM medium-res color display.
When an IBM program running on the A2088 Board writes to screen memory in dual-port RAM, the information is immediately shadowed to the graphics-access area in dual-port RAM. The shadowing procedure is not a straight copy, however; There’s some hard wired processing going on that makes it easy for the Amiga to transform PC pixel-packed graphics information into Amiga hit planes.
The shadowing process takes information from two hvtes of PC screen memory and sends alternate bits to two different Amiga bytes. The odd-numbered bits from the PC bytes go to one Amiga byte and the even- numbered bits go to the other. This automatic process doesn’t require the 68000 or the 8088. When the Amiga creates an IBM graphics display, it shifts the odd-numbered byte (containing the odd-numbered bits) into one bit plane and the even-numbered byte (with the even- numbered bits) into the second bit plane. The shadowing process unpacks the IBM graphics information; the only work the 68000 has to do is shift the unpacked information into the bit planes. ?
S
view, a Commodore engineer described a system whereby the PC system is used as a real-time data aquis- ition system and preprocessor for the Amiga. Using the public routines of the Janus library, it won’t be too difficult to develop custom applications that use the combined power of the 8088 and the 68000. The A2088 Board is not merely "MS DOS in a window.” The Amiga 2000 with the A2088 Board gives you flexibility not seen before in a microcomputer coprocessor system. El
VIZiSWRITE
PERSONAL WORD PROCESSOR
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Announcing the first desktop publishing word processor for the exciting Commodore Amiga. VizaWrite Amiga is a brand new developement of a product that has been a best seller for many years. Developed entirety in machine code. Vizawrite has the speed, compactness and style that makes the most of the Amiga.
¦ VizaWrite brings desktop publishing to the AMIGA!! Combine pictures from your favorite "Paint" program into a document, reduce or enlarge pictures at any time and then print it!! For high quality presentation o both text and graphics.
¦ VizaWrite supports all AMIGA proportional and fixed-width fonts. True proportional layout gives instant pixel accuracy to margins, tabulations and justification. Switch fonts at any time - underline, italic, bold, and superscript subscript all show on-screen as they will print.
¦ VizaWrite is extremely easy to use. We’ve made sure that our software is presented in a logical and natural way. Using pull-down menus, requester boxes, and mouse selection of activities combine to make document preparation more effective and enjoyable.
¦ VizaWrite is well behaved, allowing you to use the mutti-tasking capabilities end run se eral programs simultaneously.
¦ VizaWrite is broad minded, allowing you to include text from Textcraft, pictures from Graphicraft. Deluxe Paint ® and most other products.
¦ VizaWrite comes ready to run, no installation of the software is required and will run in 256K of RAM on one or more drives. Comes supplied with Workbench 1.2 and requires Kickstart 1.2 or greater.
¦ Because VizaWrite is well behaved, it supports all peripherals, such as hard disk subsystems, as long as they are similarly well-behaved.
M Automatically sets text into pages while editing. Text is always shown as "What you see is what you get."
¦ Headers and footers show at the top and bottom of each page, they can beoneormore lines and have their own font style and margins.
¦ Ruler lines control page layout. Margins, tabulations, justification and line spacing are all adjustable using the icons on the ruler line. Rulers can be introduced anywhere in the document. Rulers can be hidden from view, if required.
¦ Move between pages instantly, no waiting for disk accessing - select any page to work on.
¦ Copy, cut and paste by highlighting text with the mouse.
¦ Move around the text by pointing with the mouse or by using the cursor keys. Scroll through the document - forwards or backwards.
¦ Edit and save any standard ASCII file. All character codes above the space character can be used in a document. Supports all international characters.
¦ VizaWrite documents retain pertinent information when saved - such as author, creation date, notes, alteration count etc.
¦ Open as many documents onto the screen as will fit into memory. VizaWrite uses memory extremely efficiently, and works with the AMIGA operatiny system in the standard way.
¦ Mail merge from a standard ASCII file with configurable item delimiters. Alternatively, mail merge from a VizaWrite document, where each name and address is held in its own page.
¦ Optional configuration file permits the varying of many operation defaults, such as standard document size, screen colors, margins, tab stops, etc.
¦ Document history window, used to log author's name, creation date, amended date etc. Shows document statistics, such as word and sentence counts.
¦ Glossary system permits single keystrokes recall of frequently used phrases. This is inserted directly into the document at the current typing position, instantly.
¦ Supports fixed width font printing on any preferences selected printer. Supports proportional printing on certain printer types only (this is a limitation of the printers). Recommended dot-matrix printer is NEC P1NWRITER P6 P7, recommended daisywheel is JUKI 6100 or any DIABLO compatible. HP LaserJet is the recommended laser printer using the “F” font cartridge. The AMIGA proportional screen fonts are printed in high quality on supported dot-matrix printers. Daisywheel users can use proportional print-wheels to print out documents laid out using the proportional screen fonts.
VizaWrite AMIGA now forms the nucleus of a complete desktop publishing system that Viza is developing for the Commodore AMIGA. Intuitive, simple,m fast and powerful software - just what your AMIGA deserves.
Distributed by Progressive Peripherals & Software, Inc.
$ 14995
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Graphic Hardcopy And the Amiga
By Morton A. Kevelson
o matter how impressive an original Amiga screen display is, I have yet to see one that can be slipped into my portfolio or folded into a letter-size envelope. For these applications, and many others, a quality graphic printout is indispensable. The developers of the Amiga’s operating system anticipated this need by including a generic printer device (ERT:). On most computers, it is up to the applications programmer to create primer drivers for each package; the Amiga includes these drivers as part of its operating system. The applications programmer need only follow the Amiga's rules on printer control while the end user simply selects the appropriate printer driver with Preferences.
The Amiga’s printer drivers are not just simple text routines. Full graphics capabilities have been included for the dot-matrix printers, which have the ability to print bit map graphics. Even color graphic printers are supported. As a result, an Amiga fresh out of the box has so much graphic printing potential that it takes many hours to discover just what is available. Version
1. 2 of the operating system (which is starting to ship as of this writing) even includes a graphic screen-dump utility l ight on the distribution disk.
This article is intended to shorten the process of discovering the Amiga’s graphic priming capabilities. It presents die results of many hours of experimentation with several printers, some popular graphics packages and some stand-alone screen-dump programs.
INSET:
A screen dump made using Grabbit and a Canon PJ1080A.
LEFT:
77te same image printed from Aegis Images at 640 wide X 800 high on the Canon PJI080A.
Preferences
With very few exceptions, the graphic screen printer- dump parameters will be controlled entirely with the Amiga’s Preferences took Two of the three Preferences screens arc devoted entirely to printer settings. The second screen, accessed by clicking on the Change Printer box, deals primarily with the hardware aspects of the printer. However, the margin and page-length settings on this screen may be used to to control the size of the graphics dump.
The width of the printed image is set by the difference between the right and left margins. Note that this is a relative setting, since the graphic dump always starts at the left edge of the paper. The width of the dump automatically determines its height. The aspect ratio (width divided by height) of the graphic printout
is Fixed by the characteristics of the printer and its printer driver. It is also possible to set the dump size by adjusting the page-length parameter. However, the fixed aspect ratio will still prevail. Thus, the smaller of the two settings, and the aspect ratio, will determine the size of the printout.
The real fun to be had with graphic dumps is found on the third Preferences screen. This may be reached by clicking on the Graphic Select box in screen two.
On this screen take note of the three types of graphic dumps that are available under the Shade category. The Black-and-white option generates a high-contrast dump with screen colors printed as either [jure black or pure white. This mode works in conjunction with the Threshold scale at the top of this screen. An understanding of how the Amiga generates its display colors will he helpful in applying the Threshold setting.
The Amiga Color Display
Each of the Amiga’s 4,096 colors is composed of a mixture of red, blue and green primary colors, which correspond to the color phosphors of the video display. Each of the primary colors can he set at one of 16 intensity levels (hence the 4,096 possible combinations). Note that an intensity of zero is equivalent to black, or turning off that color entirely. Internally, the Amiga stores a color value in a 12-bit register with four hits devoted to each primary color. The Amiga’s custom graphics chip has 32 of these registers, which define the maximum number of different colors on the lo-res screen under normal circumstances.
The relationship between the color values and the threshold scale should now he obvious. For a given setting, eight for example, all colors with a combined intensity that is less than this value print as black. All lighter shades print as white. This relationship holds firm for shades of gray where the red, blue and green are set lo the same level. It seems to also hold fairly well for the average value when the primary-colors settings are not all the same. However, I have noticed some anomalies: Using a threshold setting of eight, on a color consisting of 15 red, 0 green and 0 blue prints as black, while 0 red, 15 green and 0 blue prints as white. This corresponds to the maximum sensitivity of the eye to the green portion of the spectrum. ?
Lie Gray Scale option is exactly as the name implies. The display colors are translated into shades of gray by printing various patterns of black dots. The total number of possible patterns is of course limited by the printer’s dot size and the number of pixels composing the screen image. For example, a four-by-four printer pattern may be made to correspond to a single screen pixel. Although this allows for 65,536 possible dot patterns, on the average only 16 unique shades of gray are actually possible. Some additional shading may he obtained by the arrangement of the dots in the matrix. The remaining patterns are merely different arrangements of dots whose differences may he discerned at the pattern boundaries. For example, color 15 red, 7 green and 0 blue (an intense orange) generates the same gray pattern as 0 red, 15 green and 0 blue (pure green) on my Canon PJ1080A and Okidata ML92 printers.
Both the Black-and White and Gray Scale options may be used with color as well as black-ribbon printers. Note that color printers should use only their black ribbon or ink pack with these modes. If you have an Oki- mate 20, you will have to make sure that the black- ribbon cartridge is in place.
If you have a color printer, the Color setting will let you produce color-graphic dumps. With very few exceptions, do not expect to see the same results on paper as you see on the screen. Printer technology is just not up to the wide range of colors available on the video display tube. Pleasing and useful results are still attainable; however, “serious” applications will demand some experimentation on your part. One approach is to set up test patterns of calibrated colors. Of course, trying out all possible 4,096 colors is quite a project. At 32 colors per screen you will need 128 dumps for a complete selection. Nevertheless, useful results can be obtained from far fewer trials.
Of the remaining settings, one lets you choose between a horizontal or vertical printout. The latter setting will let you make a larger dump than the former. Note that the aspect ratio of the horizontal dump may differ from that of the vertical dump. The last setting applies only to black-and-white or gray-scale graphics dumps. This setting lets you invert the printed relationship between light and dark screen colors. Just click on the Positive box for a dump that corresponds to the screen display. Clicking on the Negative box will generate a photographic inverse of the screen on the printer.
Of course, the Preferences settings may he changed as often as you like. And make sure, when you first customize Preferences to your most used mode and printer, you select the Save option upon exiting if you want to store the settings on the Workbench disk. Clicking on the Use box on the first screen is adequate to make temporary changes.
RIGHT:
,4 Canon PJ1080A
printout from DeluxcPaint at 320
wide x 800 high.
INSET:
The same image printed on the Canon PJ1080A at 1,024 wide x 200 high using the Preferences Vertical setting.
Setting the Palette
Every paint program has some means for changing colors. In the course of preparing this report, I examined the three most popular Amiga paint programs and noted some differences in their color-setting procedures.
Aegis Images has a color-palette control that is well suited to the type of experimentation described above. Three sliders with numerical settings from 1-15 are displayed, which may be set to control either red, green and blue or hue, luminance and shade. The red, green and blue slider combination is preferred for calibrating the color palette. The numerical settings make it very easy to set up and repeat calibrated colors for experimentation.
DeluxePaint’s palette control is also easy to work with. Six sliders for red, green, blue, hue, saturation ancl value are simultaneously displayed. The three color sliders have tick marks for all sixteen color steps with numerical markings every four steps. Changes in the red, green or blue sliders are immediately reflected in the settings of the hue, saturation and value sliders and
vice versa. The arrangement is well suited for setting up calibrated colors.
Commodore’s Graphicraft also uses red, green and blue sliders for setting the colors. However, these controls lack any visible calibration. To make matters worse, dragging the sliders results in more than 16 possible positions for each slider. I did find that clicking in the space next to the slider changed the setting in 15 discrete intervals. To repeat a setting it is necessary to count the mouse clicks as the slider is stepped along.
Graphic Dumps from Paint Programs
All of the graphic packages mentioned above include built-in graphic dumps that can be controlled by Preferences. Aegis Images 1.2 includes a useful refinement to the margin settings with its graphic screen dump. Images lets you specify the width and height of the printed image in pixels, instead of using the margin settings in Preferences. T his feature lets you exercise precise control of the dimensions and aspect ratio of the graphic printer dump.
The range of Aegis Images’ printer control is 320- 1200 pixels horizontally x 200-800 pixels vertically. These values apply to the screen orientation of the image and not the Horizontal or Vertical printout selection in Preferences. For example, a dump 640 pixels wide X 200 high in Images will print as a horizontal or vertical strip depending on the setting in Preferences.
The actual usable range of Aegis Images’ printer controls will depend on the number of dots per line the printer can generate. For example, the Okimate 20 will work with up to 920 pixels across the page while the Canon PJ1080A is limited to 640. The length of a vertical printout is essentially unlimited. A vertical aspect in Preferences will permit the entire 1200-pixel width to be used with any printer. With Images, if you try a dump with more than the possible number of pixels, it simply refuses to print. No indication is given when this happens; this is a bit frustrating, since it ?
OPPOSITE PAGE:
An Okimate 2(1 printout from Deluxeflaint at 610 wide x 602 high.
ABOVE:
The same image printed in gray scale on an Ohimatv 20 at 957 wide x 800 high.
RIGHT:
The same image printed in gray scale on an Okimate ML92 printer at a threshold of S.
ILLUSTRATED BY ROGER GOODE
normally takes several seconds for a color dump to get started.
Commercial Graphics Utilities
In addition to the screen dumps that are built into the graphic packages, stand-alone screen-dump utilities are available both commercially and in the public domain. One of the most versatile of these programs that I have come across is Grabbit from Discovery Software. Once activated, this program stashes itself in some out of the way place in RAM. Its presence is not felt until invoked by the proper “HotKey” sequence. Grabbit can he used to generate a graphic printer dump of any screen image that is displayed by any program. The only requirement is that the program whose screen is to he dumped should follow the protocols that are set forth in the Amiga’s ROM Kernel Reference Manual.
Included on the Grabbit disk is a very useful palette- adjustment utility called AnyTime. When activated, AnyTime displays a color palette that is very similar to the ones generated by the dedicated drawing programs. This is a very handy way to fiddle with the shading of a black-and-white or color graphic dump prior to printing.
From Electronic Arts, the DeluxePaint Art 8c Utility Disk Volume 1 contains a number of useful items. Among these is the PrintUtility written by Perry Kivo- lowitz. This program opens its own minimum height Workbench window to allow for Amiga protocol menus. When activated, PrintUtility will let you cycle through the available screens and pick one for printing. All the Preferences printer controls are available with the exception of the vertical aspect option.
When a screen is selected for printing, PrintUtility looks for enough empty RAM to put it in. If RAM is available, the screen will he copied to it and printed in the background. Otherwise, you are informed of the lack of space and asked to pick direct printing. Print- Utility will also let you print images and text files straight from disk. For images, the barest minimum of memory is used, since only a single line of graphics is read in at a time. This is the reason for the restriction to horizontal aspect dumps. Also on the Utility Disk is a comprehensive slide show program and the public domain SeelLBM utility. The latter lets you conveniently view individual IFF images without loading up a complete graphics package. The SeelLBM program, used in conjunction with PrintUtility or Grabbit, is a very convenient way to view and print a series of graphic images.
Public Domain Graphic Utilities
Commercial software is not the only source of graphic utilities. Many useful programs may also be found as shareware or in the public domain. A good source of public-domain software is Fred Fish (345 Scottsdale Road, Pleasant Hill, CA 94523). Mr. Fish has single- handedly undertaken the task of compiling a massive public-domain program library for the Amiga. As of ibis writing, the count is up to disk 35.
I have already come across two graphic screen-dump programs in the non-commercial sector. Scrimper, for SCReen Image PrintER, is the predecessor to the Electronic Arts PrintUtility. Scrimper will not print an image from disk; nevertheless, it is well worth the price. Scrimper may he found on Fish disk number IS.
ScreenDump is a shareware offering from Ned Konz (210 Oleeta Street, Ormand Beach, FL 32074). If you find that ScreenDump satisfies your needs, then Mr. Konz requests a minimum donation of $ 10 to further his efforts.
Conclusion and Comment
The proliferation of graphic and print utilities, so early in the Amiga’s life cycle, is a fitting tribute to its capabilities. All indications are that the selection will continue to grow for the forseeable future.
While I hate to conclude on a sour note, I feel that this may be an occasion where it may do some good. Although the Amiga’s printer routines produce satisfying results, their speed leaves something to be desired. Anyone who has actually done a graphic screen dump
will recall the anxiety associated with their first

attempt. The Amiga seems to go off to some inner limbo for an extraordinary long delay before printing starts. Color graphic dumps are always accompanied by pregnant pauses that punctuate each pass of the printhead.
The fault seems to lie entirely in the Amiga’s printer routines and not with the application software. Rumor has it that Commodore is well aware of the problem, but has declined to fix it as, to date, no one has complained. Well, for the record, here is my official complaint! Slow printing, on a machine with the Amiga’s capabilities, is a shame and a disgrace. So, go to it Commodore, fix those printer routines! ¦
Address all author correspondence to Morton Kevelson, 2471 Bragg St., Brooklyn, ATY 11235.
He combination of FOR TRAN and the Amiga, the old and the new, may seem an unlikely one. But, for many Amiga users, Absoft1 s AC FORTRAN version 2.2 could become one of their most valued tools.
Absoft’s AC FORTRAN
A review of Absoft Corporation’s FOR TRAJAT compiler for the Amiga.
By William B. Catchings and Mark L. Van Name
The Amiga FORTRAN compiler is based on a core system that is already available on other microcomputers, including the Macintosh (as Microsoft FORTRAN), the Atari ST and the Hewlett-Packard Integral PC. Absoft also offers FORTRAN 020, a version of the compiler tailored specifically to take advantage of the CSA 68020 68881 Turbo Amiga Board.
Many large scientific laboratories do much of their programming in FORTRAN. They are laced with problems that the Amiga can help to solve, such as graphical
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data presentation. Imagine, for example, a large central computer doing a great deal of number processing, with the results being turned into graphic images and displayed on Amigas. The powerful computational and graphics capabilities of the Amiga can remove the image-gcncralion work from the central machine, freeing it to concentrate on the computational chores.
To do this, the Amiga needs to process a dialect of FORI RAN very close to that in use on the larger machine, while offering reasonable performance. The Absoft compiler, while by no means perfect, fulfills both of these needs.
FORTRAN 77
FORTRAN, short for FORmula TRANslation, is a programming language that first appeared in the 1950s. It was designed to solve highly mathematical problems. Despite its age, FORTRAN is still extensively used.
In 1966, the ANSI FORTRAN standard was ratified; it is commonly known as FORTRAN IV or FOR FRAN 66. Because its structure and basic capabilities fell behind those of newer high-level languages, it was revised about a decade later as FOR'I RAN 77.
AC FORTRAN is an almost complete version of FORTRAN 77. Our testing revealed no areas of incompatibility beyond those mentioned in Appendix 1 of the manual. Of the six restrictions cited there, we feel that only three might interfere with normal work:
1. While you can declare eight- and 16-bit integer (INTEGER* 1 and INTEGER*2) variables, you cannot have constants in these sizes. It is not even possible to pass a one- or two-byte integer constant to a procedure.
2. The Absoft system restricts the size of records in direct access, formatted sequential and unformatted sequential files to a maximum of 1,024 bytes. This can be a severe limitation, as many files can have considerably larger records.
3. This FORTRAN’S runtime system handles differently I O that is to be treated a block at a lime, such as many data files, and character by-character I O, such as to the screen. It uses a set of internal buffers to manipulate the block files, while it essentially reads and writes character files one at a time. If a program terminates abnormally, the runtime system might not have flushed its block file buffers, causing data to be lost.
While these restrictions may cause problems, AC FORTRAN, overall, offers a useful implementation of FORTRAN 77.
New Additions
Like FORTRAN 77 compilers for larger machines, AC FORTRAN’S design takes into account that the new, upcoming FORTRAN standard will eventually be accepted. Its language extensions, along with some similar to those incorporated by popular laboratory machines such as the VAX from Digital Equipment and minicomputers from Hewlett-Packard, help make this version more useful to programmers. Among the most useful of these additions are the following:
• Additional looping structures: DO WHILE, WHILE,
END DO, REPEAT CYCLE and EXIT statements.
• A statement (SELECT CASE) that gives structure to multi-decision blocks of code.
• Names up to 31 characters long.
• Recursion.
• Intrinsic Shift, Date and Time functions,
• One and two-byte INTEGER and LOGICAL variables.
• Three functions, byteQ, word() and longQ, that allow the direct manipulation of specific bytes of variables.
• A function, loc(), which can get the address of any variable.
Working with the Amiga
Other extensions include a means to communicate with the Amiga’s libraries. To do this, you pass the name of an Amiga support routine, followed by the arguments for that routine, to a single routine, amiga.suh, that is called. You also must include in your programs the include files for the proper Amiga library. For example, if you want to free some memory that you have previously allocated, you include in your program the file “exec.inc” and then have the following statements:
integer*4! Size integer*4 block
call amiga( FrecMcm, block, size )
The amiga routine also can be treated as a function, for those Amiga support functions that return values.
The system does not include direct support for all of the Amiga’s many operating system and ROM Kernel functions. However, it docs come with the assembler source for the amiga.suh subroutine, so you can extend it yourself to work with additional routines.
In addition, the manual explains how to hook your FORTRAN programs to those written in C or assembler. The major trick here is using the compiler’s option that causes it to produce assembly code and then stop. While the care needed to assure correct parameter passing will be somewhat daunting to the beginner, such connections are possible.
A Complete System
AC FORTRAN is more than just a compiler. It comes with a linker, a librarian, a set of runtime libraries and a debugger. T he linker will allow you to hook up separately compiled subroutines or access routines in libraries built by the librarian. The debugger provides source-level capabilities, including single-stepping, breakpoints and the ability to examine and change the values of variables.
The system is self-contained. The linker and compiler produce executables that are reentrant and position independent, but they are not in the standard Amiga form. Further, the linker relies heavily on dynamic linking. All undefined procedure references are treated as
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external ones that are to be resolved at runtime. Partly because of this, the object files produced by this compiler are incredibly small. However, the runtime system must be present in order to run a program.
Except for the amiga.sub subroutine, AC FORTRAN does not appear to be integrated with the Amiga. You can access it only from the CLI. It has pre determined, and currently unchangeable, search rules. Amiga integration is one area in which die product definitely could use some work.
Some Bad News
AC FORTRAN’s manual is useful only to someone who already has some knowledge of FORTRAN, linkers, librarians, debuggers and the Amiga's support routines. If you are not conversant in any of these areas, this manual will do little to alleviate your confusion. Also, while there are code snippets in the manual, it contains no complete examples. The release diskette contained several example programs, but all were rather poorly documented and not for the novice. For the programmer experienced with both FORTRAN and the Amiga, however, they are useful.
The system claims to work on a 256K Amiga with a single disk drive. The release diskette is indeed onlv about half full, so that claim is believable. However, despite the fact that we conducted our tests on a 512K Amiga, we received an "Out of Memory” error message for each of their three sample programs that we tried to compile.
The manual warns you once to increase your stack size, but if you forget to do so (as we did), the resulting guru meditation is both frustrating and of little use. Vvc
Table 1. Benchmark
' ' ' - ::..... • . .:------::: .
Results.
Execution
File size
Compilation
Program
Time (mimsec)
(bytes)
Time (mimsec)
fibonacci.for
0:41
1120
0:41
Lattice
0:27
16416
4:25
Manx
0:23
6476
2:39
floaLfor
0:09
928
0:38
Lattice
0:29
16584
4:35
Manx
0:03
6512
2:37
pointer.for
0:53
760
0:32
Lattice
0:17
16232
4:32
Manx
0:20
6332
2:48
sieve.for
0:01
988
0:42
Lattice
0:06
24580
5:27
Manx
0:06
14684
2:53
found no problems with our test programs once we did STACK 40000 in the CLI before starting the compiler.
Another problem stopped us from ever actually testing the interface to the Amiga’s support routines. We believe that it works; we ran their sample programs and they did what the code suggested they should. However, as noted above, we could not get any of the samples to compile. When we tried to write our own smaller tests, we were unable to get include files to work. Without include files, we could not access the needed Amiga support files. While it is certainly possible that we missed something, several hours of playing and two complete readings of the manual still left us unable to get the include files to work.
Benchmarks
One of AC FORTRAN’s claims was a quick compiler that produced small, fast code. Some of the small code size was due to the dynamic linking scheme it uses. Nevertheless, as Table 1 shows, the compiler is indeed very fast and does produce very small objects.
In order to make the benchmarks as meaningful as possible, we used the same tests that we ran on Lattice C (version 3.03) and Manx Aztec C68K (version 3.20a commercial) in our comparison of these two C compilers [Nov. Dec. '86, p. 36]. For comparison purposes, we reproduced those results in the table as well. Briefly, the following are the four benchmark programs and their purposes:
fihnnacci.for computes a Fibonacci series recursively. We use it to test the performance of function calls.
Float.for repeatedly performs a simple, double-precision floating-point calculation. Because the Amiga handles floating-point operations in software, and because of the scientific orientation of FOR TRAN, this test seems particularly important.
Pointer for was originally designed as a test for C. It cycles through an array. In the standard FORTRAN manner, it was done here with subscripts.
Sievefor is the Sieve of Eratosthenes. It computes the number of primes between 1 and 8190, and is considered by many to be a “classic” general benchmark.
We ran all of the tests on a 512K Amiga with two disk drives, using version 1.1 oi the Amiga system software.
To be fair to all concerned, we must note that these comparisons simply could not be done identically. For the C systems, we used niakc-stylc command files, while the AC FORTRAN compiler is invoked by executing a single program, which then manages all three of its own passes. Also, we could not get include files to work, so the self-timing code was directly entered into the programs, whereas the C compilers had to pay the extra cost of opening and retrieving the code. Finally, we followed the spirit of FORTRAN in some cases rather than attempting to translate exactly each C statement. This came into play primarily for loops; we used standard DO loops in almost all cases. ?
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All of these warnings aside, the benchmarks reveal some interesting facts. First, the compiler is definitely fast, several times faster than either of the C compilers. It -also produces smaller objects, even taking into account its dynamic linking scheme.
The execution times are not as one-sided, although the results are understandable. Perhaps the most amazing is the sieve test, on which the FORTRAN program outperforms the C equivalents by many times. AC FORTRAN is obviously very good at integer arithmetic. On the other hand, it falls between Manx and Lattice on the floating-point benchmark, usually a FORTRAN bastion of strength. This is probably because the Manx library works with floating-point numbers in 68000 form, while AC FORTRAN stores and manipulates them in IEEE standard form.
AC FORTRAN does not fare at all well on the Fibonacci or pointer tests. In the case of the pointer test, this is understandable: the C programs had only to increment to go through the array, while the FORTRAN program had to increment the subscript and then compute the offset from the base. Still, this occurrence is common enough so that the AC FORTRAN compiler probably should optimize it much better than it currently does. The poor showing on the fibonacci test reflects a higher cost of subroutine calls. This may perhaps be tied into the overhead of the dynamic linking scheme, although that is not clear. Regardless, the system clearly could use work here.
For the Professional
Although not without flaws, AC FORTRAN is a very reasonable and nearly complete implementation of FORTRAN 77. It also offers some interesting and useful extensions. It does need improvement, particularly in order to integrate better with the Amiga’s standard interface and support routines and to speed its floatingpoint and subroutine call performance. The documentation also needs improvement.
It is clearly oriented toward the professional FORTRAN programmer, and could well scare off the novice or those who do not know FORTRAN already. For those in its audience, and particularly for those programmers who want to connect Amigas to larger systems where FORTRAN 77 is also the dominant language, AC FORTRAN presents new possibilities for the Amiga and its users.¦
William B. (latchings is a freelance writer and software developer. Mark L. Van Name is vice president and cofounder of Foresight Computer Corp. and a freelance writer. Write to them at 10024 Sycamore Road, Durham, NC 27703.
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Hard Disk
Any car enthusiast can tell you that a performance auto is made up of many parts. Each individual piece must be high-performance for the complete car to be high-performance. For example, a car that can do well in excess of 150mph would be very limited by tires that were only rated for 80mph. The same is true with your Amiga™ Computer. The Amiga is a very high-performance computer, but can be severely limited by the speed of its floppy disk drives. Much of the time, your computer sits there idling while loading data from the disk. This also makes you idle and greatly decreases your productivity.
Now you can turbo-charge your Amiga with a SupraDrive HardDisk and bring it up to its true performance. SupraDrive will speed up disk transfers by up to 800% and also eliminate the tedious task of constantly swapping diskettes in and out ot your floppy drive. The performance of your Amiga will be enhanced in many ways; directories, icons, and graphics will appear much faster, programs will load quicker, and the general user interface will seem much better.
A SupraDrive, much like a European sports car, includes many subtle features that greatly enhance its value. The built-in real-time clock will remember the current time and date, even when you turn your computer off - eliminating the need to set the system's clock every time you use your computer. Expanding your RAM memory is much cheaper and easier with the 512K to 4MB SupraRam modules that can be quickly installed in the SupraDrive interface. Other expansion is also easy with the Amiga Buss pass-through on the SupraDrive and the built-in SCSI port (for adding another hard disk or tape back-up).
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Circle 208 on Reader Service Card

•9
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info.phile
•>
More That’s New in 1.2
¦

»

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Version 1.2 offers great improvements in handling icons and gadgets, new additions to Preferences including more printer options, and a greatly improved Notepad. And that ’s not all, folks.
By William B. Catchings and Mark L. Van Name
Last issue in info.phile (Jan. Feb., p. 56), we began examining the newest release of the Amiga system software, version 1.2. We reviewed changes that allow you to add more memory and new devices to vour Amiga more easily than before. We also discussed some new and changed CLI commands. This time we will look at changes to some of the visible system software.
Workbench Improvements
As we noted last time, under 1.2 the Workbench has become visibly faster. A number of bugs also have been fixed and several other significant changes have been made. Some of these changes are small but improve the system's appearance. Window title bars now use two thick blue lines rather than several as in version 1.1. The CLI has a new, more descriptive icon. The Workbench disk's window is in a slightly different place on the screen and displavs its contents in a cleaner arrangement.
Other improvements make working with icons simpler and more consistent. When you drag an icon, rather than seeing the drag pointer of old, you now move a copv of the icon itself. You also can drag several icons at once, using the extended-selcction mechanism (by selecting multiple icons while holding down the Shift key; when you drag one, all the selected icons will move). Disk icons no longer remain on-screen when a disk is removed (unless it has open drawers). In previous releases, if you selected the icon for a disk that was not in the drive, you would often be rewarded with a system crash; this has been fixed.
String Gadget Enhancement
We have found one seemingly minor improvement to be a great boon to frequent Workbench users. In the past, when vou were asked to enter a string, such as in renaming a disk or changing a directory, vou had to click in the box. Or string gadget, that contained the question before you could start typing. This seemed awkward and unnecessary. Version 1.2 offers automatic selection for string gadgets to address this problem. If a program uses this feature for a string gadget, you can start typing in it as soon as it appears. Nearly all Workbench and Notepad string gadgets have adopted this convention.
String gadgets have improved in other ways. When you select one, the text cursor goes to where you were pointing when you made the selection. This makes editing such strings quicker. For those used to working on other systems, Control ! I is now equivalent to Backspace, Finally, you can skip the mouse in working with such gadgets by using two new keyboard shortcuts: To retry, you use Left-Amiga-14; to cancel, you use Lcft-Amiga-V. Little changes such as these
make the Workbench a more stable, polished and productive tool.
Cleaning up Preferences
Workbench 1.2 lias a new Preference utility with a number of improvements. It is now much more reliable. The Amiga developers have Fixed many hugs (including one particularly annoying one that caused you to lose 1(5.128 bytes of main memory every time you opened Preferences). The clock within Preferences is now updated once a minute. The date is displayed in the more standard day month year format. All Preferences windows, except for Edit Pointer, have front and back gadgets as well as drag bars. (The Edit Pointer screen has a drag bar. But not front or back gadgets.)
Interlaced Mode
A new Workbench Interlace gadget allows you to choose from Preferences to run the Workbench in the denser 640 x 400 graphics mode. If you change this setting, you must reset the Amiga before the new setting will he used. Workbench normally operates at (540 x 200 pixels; interlacing gives you twice as many lines of resolution on your screen (400 for the typical NTSC screens, 512 if you use the European RAT standard). Interlaced mode is best if you have a high- persistence monitor, otherwise the flicker may be unbearable. And using interlacing
(No I.D. required for half-elves.)
When the Going Gets Tough, the Bard Goes Drinking*
are magic, the Bard is ready to boogie. All he needs is a band of loyal followers: a light-fingered rogue to find secret doors, a couple of fighters to bash heads, a conjurer to create weird allies, a magician for magic armor.
Then it's oft to combat, as soon as the Bard finishes one more verse. Now what’s a word that rhymes with "dead ogre?”
nd the going is tough in Skara Brae town. The evil wizard Mangar has cast an eternal winter spell. Monsters control the streets and dungeons beneath. Good citizens fear for their lives. What's worse, there's only one tavern left that serves wine.
But the Bard knows no fear. With his trusty harp and a few rowdy minstrel songs he claims
4 classes of magic user, including wizard and sorceror. 85 new magic spells in all.
128 color monsters, many animated. All challenging.
Fulhcolor scrolling dungeons. 16 levels, each better than the one before. 3-D city, too.
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The Bard's Tale is available tor the Amiga for $ 49.95, the Apple 11 family for $ 44.95 and thcC64 iw Cl 28 tor $ 19.95. How to order: Visit your retailer or von van order direct with a Visa or M C hv calling 800-
245. 4525 (In California call 800-562-1112). To order hv mail send check, money order or Visa or M C info to: Electronic Arts, P.O. Box 75 10, San Mateo CA 94401. Please include $ 1 for shipping and handling per order. There is a 21 day money-hack guarantee on direct orders. Fora complete full-color catalog, send $ 1 tin Electronic Arts, l820Gateway Drive, San Mateo CA 94404- Free catalog with direct purchase. The Bard’s Tale and Electronic Arts are trademarks of Electronic Arts.
Circle 2 on Reacer Service card.
Does have a price: it consumes 32K of main memory for NTSC and 38K for PAL,
Serial Port Selections
In version 1.1. tile onlv control von could exercise over the serial port was to set its baud rate. Now you have access through Preferences to an entire screen of options. Select the Change Serial gadget and it appears. Once in this window, you can set all of the major attributes of your serial port. The most common of these is the baud rate the rate, in bits-per-second, at which data is transferred. Preferences' default is 9,600 baud, although for most modems you should use the 1,200-baud setting.
You can send or receive characters that are either 7- or 8-hits long. The read bits and write bits attributes let you control which size to use. You can also set the number of stop hits hits between characters if necessary. The parity setting allows you to specify what parity (even, odd or none) to use.
Preferences offers you two other controls over the serial port. The buffer size attribute determines the amount of memory that is set aside to temporarily hold the data being transferred. You sometimes can improve overall data-transfer speed by using a larger buffer size, but this does consume memory. You also can specify the type of handshaking. Or simple data transfer protocol, that you want. There are currently three choices: XON NOFF, RTS CTS and None. If you are in doubt about any of these new settings, consult the user manual for your communications program or modem.
Printer Support Upgrade
Preferences now makes it easier to use more printers with the Amiga. The list of supported printers is in the Select Printer window. We will review the additional ones that come with version 1.2, You can add others by putting their printer drivers in the Devs Printers directory of your Workbench disk. The set of such drivers on the disk determines the printers shown in this window. The default printer type is now Generic, a simple driver that should work, though with a minimum of features, with most printers.
Preferences now supports the Apple ImageWritcr II, with or without a color ribbon. It also handles three Okidata Microline printers: models 92, 192 and 292. If you plan to use either the Microline 92 or 192, he aware that they each come in two
versions, one "standard" and one compatible with IBM dot-matrix primers. If you have one of the standard ones, choose it bv name from the list of printers. If you have one of the IBM-compatible ones, choose CBM_MPS1000 from the list of printers.
The Microline 292 can pose a similar problem, as there are two different, optional “personality cards” available for it. One makes it IBM-compatible. To use this type, again choose CBM_MPS 1000 from the printer list. If you have the other card, plus a color ribbon, you can print color by choosing the Epson JX-80 setting.
Printing graphics is a different process from printing text. If you plan to prim graphics on a dot-matrix printer, you must enter the Change Primer window. You then select the Custom gadget that is under the words “Paper Size." Preferences currently supports many dot-matrix printers, including the Epson FX-80, RX-SO and JX-80. The CBM MPS1000, the Apple ImagcWriter II and the Okidata Okimate 20 and Microlinc 92, 192 and 292 models.
The Notepad Steps Forward
Preferences has always been a valuable and useful part of the Workbench. For some of
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Superbase Personal ..$ 119.00
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Prices may vary. Cell for liardv are prices. Delivery subject to product availability.
[ee uR
us, however, the Notepad occupied a different position: It seemed watered-down, a toy rather than a tool. With version 1,2. The Notepad takes a giant step toward becoming a text-entry and editing tool that many of us will use regularly. One important change is that, as we noted last time, you can run it on note files from the CLI. For users of the
CLI. This means that you can edit notes created from the Workbench without having to leave your CLI session.
The Notepad looks and works better than before. There are up and down scroll gadgets that let you move your text a line at a time simply and quickly. The number of the current page appears in the previous page gadget* so you can easily see where you are in your text. These simple changes give it a more professional appearance.
Many new features have been added to the Notepad, Several of these are available by mouse selection from the new Notepad Edit menu. An option that is currently on appears with a check mark to the left of it in the menu. Clicking a second time on an option turns it off.
One new option is Word Wrap, which is now the default. If on* it causes text lines to break at word boundaries as you type your note. Other Edit menu features let you manipulate blocks of text in your note. To work on a block of text von must First mark
i
it. One way to do this is to position the text cursor at the start of the block and then choose Mark Flare from the Edit menu.
Then move the text cursor to the end of the block and again choose Mark Place.
A quicker way to mark blocks is to double click the select button at the start and end of a block. Once you have identified a block of text, it will be highlighted. You then may do one of several things with it: You may remove it from your note and put it on the Clipboard by choosing Cut from the Edit menu; you can keep it in your note and put a copy of it in the Clipboard by choosing Copy from that menu; or you can change its style by choosing a combination of plain, italic, bold or underline from the Notepad Style menu. By choosing Cancel, the text will no longer be highlighted.
You insert text from the Clipboard into your document by moving the cursor to where you want the text to be inserted, and then selecting Paste from the Edit menu.
The Edit menu also lets you find and optionally replace text in a note. To do so, choose Find; then select the gadget Find: and enter the text that you wish to find. II you also want to replace that text once you
Table 1.
Version 1.2 Notepad keyboard
shortcuts.
Right-Amiga Calls the Notepad
Key Plus:
Function:
O
Open
S
Save
Q
Cancel
X
Cut
8c
Paste
C
Copy
M
Mark place
F
Find
+
Find next
-
Find previous
R
Replace
P
Plain text
I
Italic text
B
Bold text
U
Underlined text
find it, select the Hr pi: gadget and enter the replacement text. When you are done with these steps, press Return and then choose either the Next or Last (previous in the note) gadgets to tell the Notepad the direction of the search. Of course, you can always abort by selecting the Cancel gadget.
After you have entered the text, you can continue to search or replace more quickly. To do so, select Find Next or Find Last or Replace, as appropriate, from the Edit menu. All of these Edit menu options, as well as options from some other Notepad menus, have new keyboard shortcuts (see Table 1).
The Notepad also supports several other new key functions. The Tab key adds spaces to the left of the text cursor until the text cursor reaches the next pre defined, eight- character wide tab stop. You can move around quickly within a page using the Shift key and one of the four arrow keys at the same time. Shift -f Up-arrow takes you to the top of the page, while Shift + Down-arrow moves you to the page's bottom.
Shift + Left-arrow and Shift + Right-arrow move you to the beginning or end, respectively, of the current line.
The Notepad also has a number of new options that let you control how it uses fonts. To get at most of these, you select the Notepad icon and choose Info from the Workbench menu. Then select the Add gadget to the right of the words “ Tool Types” and type text into the string area between these two. The text you type exercises these new options. When you arc done with the text, hit Return and then select the Save gadget in the requester.
To start the Notepad without loading fonts from the disk, type FLAGS = NOFONTS. If you later decide you want the fonts, choose Read Fonts from the Notepad Project menu.
You can change the default font for an individual note or for the entire Notepad. To do so, pick the note’s icon or the Notepad icon and then type text as above. This time you enter FONT = NAME.SIZE, where NAME is one of the fonts in the Notepad Font menu and SIZE, is one of the si .es shown there for that font.
To change fonts while in a note, you must be sure that the Global Font option in the Notepad Format menu is off. If it is on, select it again to turn it off. Once it is off. You change fonts by selecting a new font and size from the Notepad Font menu. By default, the Global Font option is on. You can force it to be off or on by using the text method shown above and typing instead FLAGS = NOGLOBAL or FLAGS =
C i IO BA Ires pec t i vel y.
When you save a note, the last font active when the Global Font option was on becomes the default font the next time you open the note. Also, if the Global Font option is on when you save a note, none of the font changes in it arc saved with the note. Finally, you can remove all font or
* j
style changes from a note. To do so, choose Remove Fonts or Remove Styles. Respectively, from the Notepad Format menu.
And Still More. . .
Even though we have devoted two columns to version 1.2, we have only touched the surface. New features to support Amiga software developers have been added (such as a circle-graphics primitive), as well as still more new Notepad options, bug Fixes that help all of us, and new information that will allow hardware developers to make Amiga add-ons more easily than before. Included on the Workbench disk are a screen dump utility and a text to speech utility.
And we haven't even touched on the new EXTRAS disk! We think you'll agree that version 1.2 of the Amiga system software is an important step forward for the Amiga.H
Bill Catchings is a freelance writer and a software developer. Mark Van Name is vice president and co founder of Foresight Computer Corp. and a freelance writer. Write to them at 10024 Sycamore Road, Durham, NC 27703.
Rated ttl by Amiga® Users
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The Mirror Disk Copier is the Amiga's most powerful and effective disk copier. It was the first copier to produce unprotected copies of most software on the Amiga and it is still the leader in this field. No other copier can copy as much software as the Mirror. Other copiers only claim they can copy most schemes. ONLY THE MIRROR DOES IT ALL!
The Mirror Disk Copier is specially designed to back up heavily protected disks. To date it’s 100% successful! Ft’s completely automatic, no knowledge of Amiga DOS is required. It requires no drive modification.
The Mirror Disk Copier is Technically Superior. It employs its own operating system. It uses no routines from Kickstart or Workbench. It is the fastest copier available for the Amiga.
Our liberal update policy lets you make backup copies even when protection schemes change. It works on single or dual drive systems with 256K or 512K.
The Mirror Disk Copier consists of four highly advanced functions: Deep Copy - copies all protected disks; Fast Copy - an ultrafast dual drive copier; Write Check - checks drive speed; Alignment Check - checks drive alignment.
The Mirror Hacker Package is a flexible disk utility designed for serious disk analysis. It is a tool that can be used for a variety of
uses, from disk repair to disk 'breaking.’
It allows the user to access his disk drive on 4 exceedingly higher levels.
1ST LEVEL: This is the lowest level, allowing the user to read and write MFM or GCR in any format, indexed tracks and tracks of various lengths. You can view and edit any type of protected track. Complete flexibility is achieved.
2ND LEVEL: At this level is the system formatted track. You can look at a track and edit in ascii, hex, or with a direct memory assembler of your choice.
3RD LEVEL: At this level system formatted tracks are arranged so you can look at them as file system blocks. This module allows you to change system checksums, copy blocks to different disks, and trace file origins. This tool will easily allow you to patch a corrupted diskette.
4TH LEVEL: This is the highest level of disk structure, the Amiga binary file. You can study and edit data arranged as hunks, outputs from compilers, assemblers and linkers.
At any level you are able to fully edit and change your diskette to your liking. A powerful direct memory editor is included or you can use any other memory editor or disassembler of your choosing.
As a bonus this package contains a few extra ‘hacker’ type tools.
COPYKICK; A tool that will customize any Kick- start disk allowing the user to save memory after a reset and be placed in any external memory or expanded memory section. It may then be viewed by a disassembler or memory editor.
DISKSEARCH: A tool that will locate any pattern of Ascii or Hex on a diskette.
ERRORCHECK: This routine will check your disk for any errors or strange formats and report them back to you. It will also tell you the gap length of every system formatted track on the diskette. (A common protection scheme is to write a track with an extra long gap).
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Circle 110 on Reader Service card.
OfC
Playing with Intuition
The final installment of our four-part tutorial on programming in C. With the basics behind us, we have come to the payoff
By William B. Catchings and Mark L. Van Name
jr
You have now learned enough C to have some fun playing with your Amiga’s capabilities. Obviously, we cannot cover all of the functions of the Intuition operating system in one article. However, without being complete or even totally methodical, we will give you a basic understanding of how it works. This should serve as a basis for further exploration. [For a close look at programming Intuition menus, see “Creating Mentis with Intuition” in our Jan. Feb. ’87 issue, p. 48, Editors]
Unfortunately, most of the existing Amiga programming books focus on either C or Intuition, and merely touch on the other. If you want to write programs that use Intuition, there is one book that you must own; the Amiga Intuition Manual. It does not give many examples, but it describes most of the functions you will need. What you learn from that manual, coupled with this tutorial, should be enough to get you started on Intuition programming.
Playing with Our Sample
Our sample program is a simple one called play.c. It is a toy and nothing more, a somewhat mild-mannered shoot-’em-up game that might give you a fewT minutes of simple entertainment. More to the point, it is short, and yet it uses quite a few different Intuition functions. Play.c displays a window on your screen. The window contains two boxes. The smaller box is your target. The larger box contains cross hairs; this is your viewfinder. Your goal is to move the viewfinder on top of the target and click the left mouse button. The faster you do so, the more points you score. Your score is actually three numbers: the total score, the score of your last hit and the total number of hits. When you are finished playing, exit the program by clicking on the window’s close gadget.
We wrote and tested play.c on a standard, single-drive, 512K Amiga system. Due to space limitations, we did not worry about handling all possible errors. While we cannot guarantee that it will work on your system, we believe that it will.
You may want to save some of the routines from play.c to start an Amiga C library' of your own. One common goal with C programming is to build up such
a library so that each successive program you write requires less new code.
Intuition Overview
The Amiga’s system software is composed of several different parts. The lowest-level part, or kernel, is actually several system modules. Some of these are stored in the protected kickstart memory, while others are loaded as needed from your system disk.
Built on this part is another major one, the Intuition system. It is used by Workbench and many of the utilities. It is composed of functions. These functions were designed to be accessed by C programs (even though much of the initial operating system was written in the language BCPL).
We will discuss several functions in each of a few important areas. We use play.c as an example throughout.
Libraries
Intuition’s functions are stored in libraries on your system disk. These libraries are only loaded into memory when an executing program asks for them.
You load a library' when you need it by using the OpenLibraryQ Intuition function call. The function requires two arguments: an ASCII string that is the name of the library and the version number of the library. In play.c we open the Intuition and the graphics libraries. By convention, the name of the library is followed by ".library” as in intuition.library. The version number indicates what version of that library you require. If the available library is greater than or equal to that number, then it is at least upwardly compatible with the one you want, and so the call succeeds. If you specify zero for the version number, this check is ignored. We used the constant LIBRARYVERSION to specify the current library at compile time.
OpenLibraryO returns a pointer to the base address at which the library is loaded. If this pointer is null, then either the library was not found or there was not enough memory free to load it.
When you are done with a library, you should dose it so that you do not waste main memory. You close it by
Reviews of Aztec C68k am v 3.2 were great.
Aztec C6Hk goes into overdrive for benchmark speed...
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Aztec C is more than just a C compiler... compiles programs significantly faster than Lattice.. . Options that for many applications, will improve program execution performance dramatically... code generated hy Aztec C was dramatically smaller than that produced by Lattice.
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Now, the New Aztec C68k version 3.4 is even faster, more flexible, and dramatically less expensive.
We did it! We moved all of the great development utilities from Aztec C68k am-c, our S499 system, to Aztec C68k anvd, our $ 299 system.
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We also added new features, speeded up the already impressive performance, and we listened. We listened to what users were saying on the technical support lines, on the East Coast Bulletin Board, the West Coast Bulletin Board, and on BIX. Then we responded by correcting, adding and augmenting to satisfy every’ one of the major requests. The result is three carefully packaged and reasonably priced high performance development systems that will do everything you could possibly want with the Commodore Amiga.
To back up this claim, we offer a 30-day money back satisfaction guarantee. The system must be purchased by an end user directly from Manx to qualify for the 30-day return, but that's it. Less than one per cent of the systems we sell to end users are ever returned, and over 60% of the systems we sell are repeat sales or by recommendation of an existing user. That says a lot.
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New Keatures: shorter development times •smaller faster code • support for 1.1 and 1.2 Amiga DOS • direct link of Amiga object modules and libraries standard driver support • C and assembler support for 68020 and 68881 • scatter loading and support of overlays by segmentation • 1.2 Amiga library* function support • debug utilities • enumerated data types
• stack depth checking code • Amiga assembly directives support *four floating point formats: Motorola fast float, Amiga IEEE double, Manx IEEE double, 68881 • dynamic memory allocation and window sizing for the Z editor • “touch" command • improved console window RAW and CON switching • stdio I O is buffered to console *68010, 68020 debug support • “exec” function supports Amiga PATH command •VT100 emulator (source) • lots of examples
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Amiga is a registered TM ot Commodore Intl. Lattice TM Lattice. Inc
Circle 31 on Reader Service card
passing this pointer to the CloseLibraryQ function. Windows
Once we have opened the required libraries, we are ready to display something on the monitor. You can use Intuition to display data within two primary vehicles: screens and windows.
You use screens when your program must have complete control of the display and you do not care about working with other programs. Most systems do not offer multitasking capabilities. On such systems, this is typically the way you would manipulate the display. Also, working with the screen in this fashion is often the fastest possible way. This is how most of the current Amiga games have been written.
However, the Amiga can allow more than one program to run simultaneously. All such programs that use the display then must share it. You share the display by using windows. For example, when you have two different versions of the CLI running at once, each is in its own window.
Since play.c is only a simple game, we decided to make it display through a window. You will often want to set up and open windows in Amiga C programs.
With this in mind, we put the window initialization and opening code in an independent routine that you may want to save for other programs as part of your growing C function library.
To build a window you must fill in the Window data structure. To do so you must initialize many fields.
Most of these are either self-explanatory or used only in complicated programs. A few deserve special explanation. You set the two edge fields to determine the starting upper-left coordinates of your window. You use the width and height fields to specify the starting window size and, if the user is allowed to resize the window, the maximum and minimum sizes for it.
The Flags field can be more confusing. You use it to tell what gadgets you want for your window, how your window’s updating should be handled, and to specify other parameters. In our window-initialization code, we turn on all the window gadgets, including dragging, resizing, depth arranging and closing. The ACTIVATE flag indicates that our new window should become the active window when it is opened. We require that the window image be updated any time it is first covered, by another window or requestor, and then uncovered. Because we do not want to worry about updating the window in play.c, we used the option SMARTREFRESH to let the system do it for us.
IDCMP
The field IDCMPFlags of the New Window structure leads us to our next topic: Intuition's Direct Communications Message Port (IDCMP).
IDCMP allows your program to communicate with Intuition. Whenever some form of outside input is given to the Amiga, usually from the mouse or keyboard. An InputEvent is built. It describes what happened. Intuition also uses events to indicate disk
Setting Up Your Program Development Disks
In the first installment of this series (July August ’86), we gave instructions on how to set up two disks for program development, C-CLI and C-DEVEL. We assumed that you owned Lattice (or Amiga) C, and we referred to Appendix D of its revised 1.1 manual. Many readers have written to us with the news that there is no such appendix. But we do have one. As it turns out, the appendix came with our development system from Commodore.
It is not something that Lattice distributes. So, to clear up any confusion, here is a summary of the relevant portions of that appendix.
Create the C-CLI disk as follows. Diskcopv your original Workbench disk and name the copy C-CLI. Then reboot with C-CLI and change it in the following ways. Use Preferences to activate the CLI and go to 80-column mode. Make any other changes your system may require while you are here, and then save your changes.
Start up the CLI and close all other active windows. Then insert into DPI: the disk (from Lattice) named C* DEVEL. In the CLI window, type:
EXECUTE Dfl:s make_c_cli.
You will get a number of messages that tell you about the excess files that are being cleared from various directories. When you get the message “Done,” this disk is ready.
To make your C-DEVEL disk, first make a diskcopy of the C-DEVEL disk from Lattice. Name it C-DEVEL. Reboot with the C-CLI disk you just made. You will be left in the CLI. Put the new C-DEVEL copy in DEL. Copy the commands from the C-DEVEL disk to the C- CLI disk by typing:
COPY DFLc c:
Then remove them from the C-DEVEL disk by entering:
DELETE DFLc ?
Your two disks are ready to go. We suggest that you
COPY DfhexampIes make ? DF0:s
so that the makesimple command is available to you at all times. Also, we suggest you make one or more directories for your programs on the C-DEVEL disk.
We apologize for any difficulties or confusion that our earlier error might have caused.?
Circle 150 on Reader Service card.
Gold Disk reveals
Desk Top Publishing for the Amiga.
Welcome to the exciting world of Desk Top Publishing with PageSetter, the page composition and layout program foryour Amiga. With PageSetteryou can mix graphics and text in a variety of styles and fonts to create professional quality reports, forms, newsletters, flyers and more.
Here are some of PageSetter’s features:
An ‘intuitive’ user interface combines ease of operation with complete flexibility of page design. At all times ‘WHAT YOU SEE IS WHAT YOU GET’. Use magnification to zoom in for detailed work or pull back for the full page. Enhance text and graphics with a variety of different borders, shading and shadows.
Articles may be created using the built-in word processor or imported from other programs like TextCraft or Scribble! Similarly use the built-in graphics editor to create graphics or import them from programs such as Deluxe Paint or Aegis Images.
Other features include:
• Point size capabilities to 800 pt.
• Type may be centered, flush left or right and justified.
• Multi page documents with variable page sizes and formats.
• Rules, grids, column and margin indicators.
• Measurements in inches or picas.
• Prints on any printer in Amiga preferences.
Suggested retail price $ 149.95 US.
Requires Amiga with minimum 512 KB and one drive.
Now Available.. .POSTSCRIPT support for laser printers.
Contact your local dealer or Gold Disk Inc.
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PageSetter is a registered trademark of Gold Disk Inc. AMIGA is a registered trademark of Commodore Amiga Inc. Scribble! Is a registered trademark of Micro-Systems Software Inc. Deluxe Paint is a registered trademark ol Electronic Arts. Textcraft is a registered trademark of Commodore Amiga Inc. Aegis Images is a registered trademark of Aegis Development.
Insertion or removal, the passage of time, and the fact that new preferences have been chosen. Each new event is placed at the back of a queue of other such events.
You receive events in your program via messages.
The function GetMsgQ returns a pointer to the First message in the queue, or NULL if there are none. You must specify a UserPort through which to receive your messages. When you open a window, Intuition supplies you with a UserPort. You use the IDCMPFlags field of the New Window structure to state which of the possible IDCMP message classes you want to be placed in your event queue. In this way, you can limit the number of messages your program must handle. In our window opening routine, to be fairly general, we asked to be given only WINDOWCLOSE messages.
You are not stuck forever with this set of message classes. You can modify the set while your program is running; your window’s UserPort will receive all messages of the new set of classes. You do this with the ModifylDCMPQ function. In playx, we indicated that we wanted to receive window-resizing, window-closing and mouse-button event messages.
Once you receive a message, yon should reply to it as quickly as possible. Before you reply, you must save the message fields in which you are interested, so that later events do not affect this list. You then reply with the ReplyMsgO function. After you have replied, you perform whatever processing the messages require and then check for more messages in your queue. Each event is marked with a time. This time is the seconds and microseconds that have elapsed since the Amiga was booted. For our game, we want to translate this into an approximate number of milliseconds. To do so, we divide the microseconds by 1,024 (right-shift 10 bits), multiply the seconds by 1,024 left-shift 10), and then add the two numbers together.
The simplest thing to do would be to loop back and try to get another message with GetMsgQ. However, there may be other processes running on the Amiga that could use the CPU cycles that such a busy loop would waste. Therefore, when there are no more messages in our queue, we WaitQ until another event message arrives at our UserPort. To wait in this fashion, you must use the following rather obscure notation:
Wait I my_window - > UserPort - > mp_ SigBit);
This statement simply left-shifts the signal bit number to the position assigned at run time to your UserPort. WaitQ returns when there is an event message.
When we receive a CLOSEWINDOW message, we clean up any mess the program has left and then exitQ.
We also must deal with the problem that resizing the window could obscure the target. Because of this, when we receive a NEWSIZE message, we give the player a new target.
Most of the actual code in play.c is executed when a MOUSEBUTTON event occurs. Because we did not specify otherwise, we only receive a mouse-button event when the selection (left) button is pressed or released.
If the event is a SELECTDOWN code, we ignore it. We
only want to act when the “click” is completed by- releasing the button, which we receive as a SELECTUP code.
When a SELECTUP occurs, we first check the mouse’s position. We retrieved this position from the event message before we replied. We must decide whether the mouse was “close" to the box. We decide in the hit routine by checking if the difference in the two sets of coordinates is less than the accuracy delta defined by ACCURACY. We give the player only three seconds to hit each target. Therefore, if the mouse was close enough, we subtract from 3,000 the number of elapsed milliseconds between when the box was drawn and when the mouse button was released. This gives us the score.
We get the SELECTUP’s time from the IntuiMessage structure.
Once wc have the score (total, for this hit and number of hits), we must display it. We pass the score to the routine ivritescorei) for display. Then we draw a new box with our function putboxQ. PutboxQ also gets the time after it has drawn the box by calling CurrentTimeQ and translating the result into milliseconds as before.
Alternate Pointer
So far we have not discussed how to move the viewfinder with the mouse. Yet, if you run the program you will see that it does indeed move with the mouse. We could have moved it by creating a sprite, asking for MOUSEMOVE events and then moving the sprite appropriately. But we didn’t. We cheated.
We took advantage of the fact that the mouse pointer is actually sprite zero of the eight sprites available on the Amiga. We used the SetPointerQ function to change the shape of the mouse pointer from its normal arrow form to our viewfinder. SetPointerQ causes this change to occur only when the specified window is active. If you activate another window, the pointer will return to its familiar arrow shape.
Sprites are low-resolution graphics objects that are maintained on the screen separately from the rest of the display by the Amiga’s hardware. Since they are handled separately by the hardware, you do not need to erase them when you move them. They can be up to sixteen dots wide and any height. They exist in two hit planes, which gives you four colors with which to work. One of these colors, color zero, is special. It is “see- through." This lets you build “holes” and non-rectangu- lar sprites.
You give a sprite its shape with an array of word pairs. The sixteen bits in each word correspond to the width of the sprite. The bits of each word in the pair specify whether that bit’s color should be 0, 1, 2 or 3. A pair of zero words start and begin the array. Our sprite data array, ptr_thta, defines a square with cross hairs. Getting exactly the image you want from such an array can require some time. The best way is to start with a sprite that is close to what you want and then change it as needed.
The SetPointerQ function requires several arguments: the window in which you will use the alternate pointer, the sprite data array, the height, the width and the x- ?
Introducing a spreadsheet with the speed of a mouse and the memory of an elephant.
Without memorizing critical locations.
Unicalc also gives you new flexibility in window management. The window environment includes sizing and repositioning; vertical and horizontal scroll bars: page up, page down, page left and page right designators; close window designators; and pull down menus.
Because of its sparse matrix technology, Lattice's Unicalc has a jumbo-size memory-at least twice as large as other Amiga spreadsheets. And the memory is used dynAMIGAlly:
d J J
the greater the memory, the larger the spreadsheet.
A wide range of database functions is provided to fill ranges, perform queries on a database, and build tables based on various input data. What’s more, this software package allows
you to escape
Lattice
Lattice, Incorporated Post Office Box 3072 Glen Ellvn, Illinois 60138
(312) 858-7950 TWX 910-291 -2190
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Lattice is a registered trademark of Lattice. IncAnicalc isa registered trademark of Lattice, Inc Amiga is a registered trademark rifOtmmodore Amiga. Inc
Orcfe 23 on Reader Service card
to CLI to perform AmigaDos functions.
Other outstanding features include: DIF, a file format which permits you to import and export your save files from other spreadsheets; Foreign Language versions; plus HIDE cell capability which allows you to hide a single cell, column of cells or a row of cells from the screen display.
To simplify operation, comprehensive context- sensitive HELP screens are alwavs
J
available, no matter where you are in the spreadsheet.
Despite all its features, Unicalc is the lowest cost spreadsheet for your Amiga PC-only $ 79.95. And a complete template pack is available for just $ 39.95. So, you can get the whole package for only SI 19-90. With that kind of performance and price, you'll agree that Lattice has just built a better mousetrap for your mouse driven Amiga PC.
And y-ccnter offset. These last two values define the place on the pointer that actually determines its location, or its activation point. The standard arrow pointer has an x and y offset of 0, 0. This means that its activation point is in the upper-left corner, the point of the arrow. We are trying to build a pointer that looks like a viewfinder. Therefore, we want the activation point to be at the meeting of the cross hairs. We specified an x and y offset of -8, -6. This tells Intuition to shift the pointer position - 8 dots horizontally (minus indicates left) and - 6 dots vertically (minus indicates up). When we gel the coordinates of the mouse pointer in a SELECTUP event, it will be the coordinates of the center of our pointer.
It is important to note that any graphics object that is manipulated by the Amiga’s display hardware, such as a sprite, must be in chip memory (the first 512K). If you only have 512K of memory or less, then this is not a
j
problem. If you have additional memory, you should use the ATOM tool on the executable file that contains the sprite’s definition array. The loader then will automatically force that part of your program to be in chip memory. You can find more information about the ATOM tool and the loader in the Amiga DOS User's Manual.
Simple Graphics
We do only a little bit of Amiga graphics in play.c. However, it serves as a good introductory example. In order to draw a graphics item, such as a line or some shape, you use a rastport. A rastport handles such tasks as keeping your graphics objects within your window, keeping track of your drawing pens and other miscellaneous functions that you probably do not want to do yourself.
When you open a window, Intuition provides you
with a default rastport (RPort). We use this for all of our drawing. When drawing, you use one or more pens. A pen has associated with it a color register. To draw lines and simple graphics, you need just one pen the foreground pen. You set this pen to one of the Amiga’s 32 available pens with the SetAPenQ function. There is also another pen that is used in some drawings the background pen. You can set it with the function Set- BpenQ. By default, the background pen is pen zero.
We draw the target box by using the PolyDrawQ function. This function works by drawing successive lines from the current position to the first position in the coordinates structure and from the first coordinate to the second, for as many points as you specify. The array comers contains the four points of a square. We first call MoveQ to position the pen and then call Poly- DraioQ to draw lines that connect the four points of the square.
In our example, we use the Set A Pen Q function to set the foreground pen alternately to pen 0 and then to pen 1. We use pen 0 to draw in the background’s color. This erases the previous box. The previous box's coordinates are still in the corners array because it is a static array.
We then SeLAPnU) back to pen 1 to draw the next box.
The target is supposed to be drawn in random positions. We use the Lattice C library random-number functions rand() and srandQ to generate the box’s coordinates each time we must move it. We give srandQ an initial seed value based on the time. This helps to avoid having the same box positions every time you run the program. Rand() returns a number between 0 and the largest integer. We scale that value by AND mg it down to 1,024 for the x location and 512 for the y. If the scaled-down number is larger than our window, we try again until it is correct. We then use this x and y to
Continued on p. 102.
Improving the Sample Program
The programs that we have provided as samples are by no means perfect. However, they can serve as starting places for other, more useful ones.
In order to get either the wordcount program or the text analysis program to process an input file, you have to redirect the standard input. Both would be more useful if they instead took an input file name as a command line argument. You could even make them able to process all of the files that matched an AmigaDOS- style wildcard.
There is one program that you can change from wrong to right! On page 60 of the September October ’86 issue, in our sample function cpystr, there is an error. The if statement shown there should break out of the for loop when *dest = = " 0 not when *dest != ’ 0’. Our thanks to Henry L. Warner of Lynn Haven, FL, for catching this error.
You could do many different things to spruce up play.c, our sample program this time. One easy improve
ment would be to utilize better the Amiga’s colors. In the sample, we never try to specify the colors directly. Instead, we use whatever colors are already present in the color registers. You could use the SetRGB4() function to set the color of the pens you used.
Our viewfinder is a simple, boring box. You could change its shape, perhaps into something a bit more like a gunsight. Add some motion. Try moving the target box a few pixels in a random direction every couple of INTUITICKS events (about ten occur every second).
You also could change the program so that it handles ACTIVE WINDOW and IN ACTIVE WIN DOW events. The player should be able to have a new target if he goes to another window and then returns.
One caution: save a recent, working copy! When you program relatively close to the machine, as in this program. You can easily ruin your source file, or even your disk.D
“Open the pod bay doors, HAL...”
Programmers cast their vote!
Right now, leading software developers are hard at work on the next generation of Amiga® products. To add the spectacular sound effects we've all come to expect from Amiga software, they am overwhelmingly choosing one sound recording package...
FutureSound. As one developer put it, "FutureSound should be standard equipment for the Amiga."
FutureSound the clear winner,..
Why has FutureSound become the clear choice for digital sound sampling on the Amiga? The reason is obvious: a hardware design that has left nothing out. FutureSound includes two input sources, each with its own amplifier, one for a microphone and one for direct recording; input volume control; high speed 8-bit parallel interface, complete with an additional printer port; extra filters that take care of everything from
H VJ51GM
background hiss to interference from
the monitor, and of course, a microphone so that you can begin recording immediately.
What about software?
FutureSound transforms your Amiga into a powerful, multi-track recording studio. Of course, this innovative software package provides you with all the basic recording features you expect. But with FutureSound, this is just the beginning. A forty-page manual will guide you through such features as variable sampling rates, visual editing, mixing, special effects generation, and more. A major software publisher is soon to release a simulation with an engine roar that will rattle your teeth. This incredible reverberation effect was designed with FutureSound’s software.
Question: What can a 300 pound space creature do with these sounds? Answer: Anything he wants.
Since FutureSound is IFF compatible (actually three separate formats are supported) your sounds can be used by most Amiga sound applications. With FutureSound and Deluxe Video Construction Set from Electronic Arts, your video creations can use the voice of Mr. Spock, your mother-in-law, ora disturbed super computer.
Programming support is also provided. Whether you're a "C" programming wiz or a Sunday afternoon BASIC hacker, all the routines you need are on the non-copy protected diskette.
Your Amiga dealer should have FutureSound in stock. If not, just give us a call and for $ 175 (VISA, MasterCard or COD) we'll send one right out to you. Ahead warp factor one!
Applied Visions, Inc., Suite 2200, One Kendail Square Cambridge, MA 02139 (617)494-5417
Amiga is a registered trademark ot Commodore-Amiga, Inc.
Deluxe Video Construction Set is a trademark ol Electronic Arts, Inc.
AmigaWorld
Sophisticated, Stimulating, and System-specific
When you use the most sophisticated and exciting computer on the market today, you deserve an equally sophisticated and exciting companion magazine.
Introducing AmigaWorld, published by CW Communications Peterborough, the leader in quality computer publications. It's the only magazine for Amiga users.
Amiga World's clearly-written features help new users take full advantage of the newest Commodore. Plus, lively and fully-illustrated articles offer inspiration to everyone who wants to be creative while learning.
You'll get outstanding color reproduction on high- quality, oversized pages. Instead of a reasonable facsimile, you'll see true-to-life examples of the Amiga's colorful graphics!
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Magazine
Making the Amiga Work For You
With unrivaled graphics and sound capabilities, the Amiga is already in a class by itself. AmigaWorld not only tells you why, it shows you how every incredible feature can work for you.
In each issue, AmigaWorld authors will guide you through a new frontier of computing!
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DIGITAL canvas
I This month’s exhibit features the work of Armond Deueno, a “mostly self taught” artist who lives and works on his Amiga in Springfield, Massachusetts.
Though he has had some graphic arts training,
Armond Deveno is primarily interested in painting.
Armond’s interest in and enthusiasm for computer art are evident in his work; sometimes, he says, the newness of this artform makes him feel . .like a medieval monk must have felt in front of an illuminated manuscript.”
Armond was introduced to computer art while looking for a good game computer; he was first captivated by Microillustrator on an Apple II. As he related to AmigaWorld, his first exposure with computer art reminded him of his childhood experiences with The Winki Dee Show, a kids’ show that had a segment when you could attach a special drawing board to the TV screen and trace drawings. Armond maintained a fascination with the idea of artistic interaction with the cathode ray tube.
Armond waited for “minicomputer technology to come down to micros” He bought a Mindset computer, and then, after reading about the chips Jay Miner was working on, became convinced he had to have an Amiga. He likes the ability to rapidly change colors, the instant feedback and the ability to combine and manipulate digitized art with computer paintings. He also enjoys not having to clean up. ¦
Anyone submitting artwork to be considered for exhibit in Digital Canvas should send the artwork on a disk and properly packaged to:
Amiga World
80 Elm St.
Peterborough, H 03458
Attn: Art Director
Please include brief biographical information, relevant details about access to the pictures and any information regarding special products or procedures used in creating the artwork. Please do not submit disks with less than eight finished pictures.
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Soarchl.ink is sponsored by the National Federation of Abstracting .mi) Information Services.
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N**niP titer );
ount
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CLImate is a tremendously powerful utility which lets you completely bypass the CLI and Workbench, eliminating a major source of frustration and confusion for Amiga users. With a simple click of the mouse, it allows you to rename files, delete files, make Directories, and create multiple file copies (even to the RAM disk), its print display options let you adjust page length, margins, numbers. CLImate can do all this and much more! From Progressive Peripherals & Software, Inc.
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Easy Palettes
An Amiga Basic program that allows you to create custom color palettes.
By Christoph C. Borel-Donohue
Here’s an interactive way to create your own palette of colors for your Amiga Basic programs. Along the way, you will learn how to use some of the advanced features of Amiga Basic, such as opening windows, asking the mouse’s position, and using pull-down menus.
The Easy Palette program lets you create, modify and store Amiga Basic palettes, Here’s how it works.
First, the program defines a screen (in this example, a low-resolution screen with 320 x 200 pixels) using the Screen command. Then a window is defined that is just large enough to hold the palette, three mixing bars and a big area that shows the currently selected color.
A subroutine called INITPALETTE then assigns the gray tones to the different colors and calls the subroutine named ALLCOLOR, which draws the mixing bars. The pull-down menu is initialized by INITMENU.
Main Loop
The main program loop consists of three lines. In the first statement, the program checks to see if the pulldown menu has been activated by the right-mouse button. If that has happened, the program jumps to the CHECKMENU routine to determine which menu item
Listing 1. Easy Palettes
’EASY PALETTES : A interactive color mixing program
’COPYRIGHT BY CHRISTOPH C.BOREL-DONOHUE ’WRITTEN IN AMIGA-BASIC MAY.1986
t
DEFINT A-Z
DIM P(3,31),RGBS!(3),RGB(3),RGBN(3)
SCREEN 2,320,200,5, I
WINDOW 2,"PALETTE",(10,10)-(300,100) , 2.2 WINDOW OUTPUT (2)
COSUB INITPALETTE GOSUB INITMENU
LOOP: ’check if mouse has been activated
ON MENU GOSUB CHECKMENU : MENU ON IE M0USE( 0)00 THEN GOSUB CHECKMOUSE : MOUSE ON GOTO LOOP
CHECKMOUSE: 'get mouse position and adjust gauges
X=MQUSE(1)
Y=M0US E(2)
IF X >16 5 THEN X =16 5
IF X 1 0 THEN X- 1 0 Listing continued, on p. 74.
(Store, Specials or Actions) has been selected.
The second line of the main loop tests whether the left-mouse button is activated. If so, the subroutine CHECKMOUSE is entered. The vertical position of the mouse determines whether a new color on the palette is selected or if one of the color sliders has to be moved. The horizontal position determines which color is being edited. This, the current color, also appears in a big rectangle on the left of the screen. By adjusting the color sliders, any of the Amiga's 4,096 colors can be produced. As mentioned earlier, only 16 colors are available at one time for the mixing process, but if you select the menu item Upper Lower Palette, you can toggle between the values of the upper or lower palette. This keeps the display from changing colors as it would if all 32 colors were on-screen together.
To make the color-mixing process more user friendly, a number of extra features have been added. It is possible to swap two colors, to copy a color to another color and to mix two colors together. You might want to generate a range of colors (e.g., from dark blue to light green). By selecting Spread Color, the RGB (red, green, blue) values are linearily interpolated. Finally, it is possible to change the brightness of the selected color by pressing two different keys to lighten or darken it.
Storing the Palette
Storing the palette as a data file can be done with the Store menu by selecting Save Color Table. The RGB values of each color are written on a data file and can be used in any program you design.
It is possible to load any color palette data file for modifications. T he Easy Palettes program listing shows you how to convert die RGB values back into colors (subroutine LOADCOLOR).
If a color palette is never changed in an application program. Save Subroutine should be selected from the menu. The program then writes a subroutine (LOADCOLOR2) on a user-selectable data file that can be merged to your own programs.
Finally, to get out of the main program loop, select Exit Program. I
Address all author correspondence to Christoph C. Borel-Donohue, 34 Dickinson St., Amherst, MA 01002.
The Financial Manager
Professional Home Accounting System And Register
PHASAR™ is the most powerful, versatile, and easy to use Financial Management software package available for your 512k Amiga™ Computer. It's loaded with features. Here are just a few:
• Interacting Accounts (checking, savings, charge cards, charge accounts, etc.)
• Ability to define up to ten different tax calculations.
• Ability to define up to twenty tax worksheets and forms of your choosing.
• Extensive help messages available at the touch of a key.
• Many printer reports including: account summaries, selected transactions, category summaries, net worth statement, tax calculations.
• Loan and savings account analyses presented four-at-a-time on the screen for easy comparisons.
• Excellent colorful presentation of reports and plots on screen.
Call Finally Software collect to learn more about PHASAR.
Or, order risk free; your satisfaction is guaranteed. (714) 854-4434
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PHASAR and Amiga are trademarks of Marksman Technology, inc. and Commodore-Amiga, Inc.
respectively.
V. V Finally Software
4000 MacArthur Blvd., Suite 3000 0QQ OR
SOFT WARE Newport Beach, California 92660 Available flOW for Only
Circle 51 on Reader Service card.
We Teach Your Computer Spanish. It Teaches You.
A detailed psychotherapeutic game on a disk, Dr Xes takes the form of a Gestalt therapy session. Learn more about artifical intelligence, psychotherapy, and yourself Dr Xes even talks. More fun than a padded room, great for parties. S49.95.
Shrink In A Box
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(714) 854-4434
Senor Tutor leads a beginning Spanish student through self-paced, changing lessons. You learn greetings and phrases, household terms, and much more.
Sophisticated speech synthesis actually lets your computer speak Spanish.
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X M =(X- 15) 10 IF Y 20 THEN COL=XM+16
IF COLOCOLOLD THEN GOSUB ALLCOLOR
C. 0 L 0 L D = C 0 L ELSE
C=(Y-25) 10
IF C MOD 2=0 THEN RETURN C=(C+1) 2
IF (C 1) OR (03) THEN RETURN ON C GOSUB RED,GREEN,BLUE P(C ,C.OL)=XN GOSUB MIX END IF RETURN
DATAFILE: ’save load color tables
LOCATE 3,2 : INPUT "FILENAME";FILES ON MENU ITEM GOSUB SAVECOLOR,LOADCOLOR , SAVESUB GOSUB ALLCOLOR
LOCATE 3,2 : PRINT STRINC$ (26," ");
RETURN
CHECKMENU: ’branch to subroutines
MENUID=MENU(0)
MENUITEM=MENU(1)
ON MENUID GOSUB DATAFILE,SPECIAL,EXITPALETTE RETURN
SAVECOLOR: ’save color table
OPEN ”0" , 1 , FILF.$
IF SWITCH*1 THEN GOSUB SWITCH FOR 1=0 TO 31
WRITE 1 ,P(1 , I) , P(2,1), P ( 3 ,1) NEXT I CLOSE 1 RETURN
LOADCOLOR: 'load color table
OPEN ,FILES
FOR 1=0 TO 31
INPUT 1,P(1,I),P(2,I),P(3,1)
IF I>15 THEN PALETTE I , P(1 , T) 15! , P(2 ,1) 15! ,P(3 ,1) 15 NEXT I CLOSE 1 CLS
RETURN

ll$ =CHRS (34)
PRINT 1 PRINT 1 PRINT i PRINT 1 PRINT 1 PR I NT 1 PRINT 1 PRINT 1 P RIN T 1 PRINT 1 CLOSE 1 RETURN
II
TI
II
t»
II
IT
II
CD _
Listing continued on p. >
Professional, full featured and built On convenience and ease of use. File size limited only by disk capacity, (14,000 records" on standard micro floppy or 32,000 records on a hard disk.) Field length is variable, with up to 40 fields per record. Alpha or numeric sort on multiple keys 10 with up to 5 fields each). Report Writer calculates fields with subtotals and averages, performs fast addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, (over 10 math functions can handle complicated equations). Allows selective printing (cased on 20 different selection criteria). Minimal mouse commands to speed data entry and manipulation. 51 2K
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Amiga Schematics still $ 24.95! Curdinul Software Info: (703) 491-6494 14 840 H uiId America Dr.
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SPECIAL: ’special color feature
ON MENU ITEM GOSUB SWITCH,SWAPCOL,SPREAD,COPYCOL,MIXC0L,CHBRIGHT
GOSUB ALLCOLOR
RETURN
REDS*11; 11 $ ; REDS ;H$
GREENS*";H$ ;GREEN $ ;H$
BLUE$ = fl;H$ ; BLUES ; H$
FOR 1=] TO 32"
R=ASC(MID$ (RED$ tI,l))-65"
G=ASC(MID$ (GREENS,I,1))-65"
B = ASC(MID$ ( BLUES, I , 1 ) )-65,f PALETTE 1-1,R 15. ! ,G 15. ! , B 15 . !" NEXT I"
RETURN"
S AV E S U B: ’save color subroutine
REDS*"" : GREEN$ ="" : BLUES*"" FOR 1=0 TO 31
RED$ =RED$ +CHR$ (65+P(1,1)) GREEN$ = GREEN$ +CHR$ (65+P(2,1) ) BLUE$ =BLUE$ +CHR$ (6 5+P(3,1)) NEXT I
OPEN "0"t l,FILES PRINT 1 , " 1.0ADCOLOR2 : "
SWITCH: ’switch between upper lower palettes
ti
II
74 March April 1987
AVAILABLE NOW!
StaiBoani2
If you’ve owned your Amiga® for a while now, you know you definitely need more than 512k of memory. You probably need at least double that amount...but you might need as much as an additional two megabytes. We want to urge you to use StarBoard2 as the solution to your memory expansion problem -and to some of your other Amiga-expansion needs as well!
It's small, but it’s BIG-
Since most of you want to expand your Amiga's memory without having to also expand your computer table, we designed StarBoard2 and its two optional "daughterboards" to fit into a sleek, unobtrusive Amiga-styled case that snugly fastens to your computer with two precision- machined jackscrews.
The sculpted steel case of StarBoard2 measures only 1.6" wide by 4.3"high by
10. 2"long. You can access the inside of the case by removing just two small screws on the bottom and pulling it apart. We make StarBoard2 easy to get into so that you or your dealer can expand it by installing up to one megabyte of RAM on the standard StarBoard2 or up to two megabytes by adding in an Upper Deck.
Thiscard hasdecks!
The basic StarBoard2 starts out as a one megabyte memory space with Ok, 512k, or one megabyte installed. If you add in an optional Upper Deck (which plugs onto the Main Board inside the case) you bring StarBoard2 up to its full two megabyte potential. You can buy your StarBoard2 with the Upper Deck (populated or unpopulated) or buy the Upper Deck later as your need for memory grows.
And you can add other functions to StarBoard2 by plugging in its second optional deck -the Multifunction Module!
StarBoard2:1unctionsfive!
If we count Fast Memory as one function, the addition of the MultiFunction Module brings the total up to five!
THE CLOCK FUNCTION:
Whenever you boot your Amiga you have to tell it what time it is! Add a MultiFunction Module to your StarBoard2 and you can hand that tedious task to the battery-backed,
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Auto-Configuring Fast RAM Zero Wait States User Expandable from 512k to 2 Megabytes Bus Pass- Through MultiFunction Option: battery clock, FPU, parity, Sticky-Disk
real-time clock calendar. A small piece of MicroBotics software in your WorkBench Startup-Sequence reads the clock and automatically sets the time and date in your Amiga. And the battery is included (we designed it to use an inexpensive, standard AAA battery which will last at least two years before needing replacement).
THE FLOATING POINT FUNCTION:
If any one aspect most characterizes the Amiga it's fast graphics! Most graphic routines make heavy use of the Amiga Floating Point Library. Replacing this library with the one we give you with your MultiFunction Module and installing a separately purchased Motorola 68881 FPU chip in the socket provided by the Module will speed up these math operations from 5 to 40 limes! And if you write your own software, you can directly address this chip for increased speed in integer arithmetic operations in addition to floating point math.
THE PARITY CHECKING FUNCTION:
If you install an additional ninth RAM chip for every eight in your StarBoard2, then you can enable parity checking. Parity checking will alert you (with a bus-error message) in the event of any data corruption in StarBoard2's memory space. So what good is it to know that your data's messed up if the hardware can't Fix it for you? It will warn you against saving that data to disk and possibly destroying your database or your massive spreadsheet. The more memory you have in your system the more likely it is, statistically, that random errors will occur. Parity checking gives you some protection from this threat to your data residing in Fast RAM. Note that the Amiga's "chip" RAM cannot be parity checked.
THE IMMORTAL MEMORY DISK FUNCTION (STICKY-DISK):
When you've got a lot of RAM, you can make nice big RAM-Disks and speed up your Amiga's operations a lot! But there's one bad thing about RAM-Disks: they go away when you re-boot your machine. Sticky-Disk solves that problem for you. It turns all of the memory space inside a single StarBoard2 into a Memory Disk that will survive a warm-reboot! When your Amiga attempts to grab a StarBoard2 in Sticky-Disk mode, a hardware signal prevents the system from acquiring the StarBoard2 as FastRAM (and thereby erasing your Files) -instead it is re- recognized as a Memory Disk and its contents are preserved intact. If you want to work rapidly with large files of data that are being constantly updated (such as when developing software) you can appreciate the Sticky-Disk!
Fast RAM -no waiting!
StarBoard2 is a totally engineered product. It is a ZERO WAIT-STATE design, auto-conFiguring under AmigaDOS 1.2 as Fast RAM. Since AmigaDOS 1.1 doesn't support autoconFtguration, we also give you the software to conFigure memory in 1.1.
Any applications software which "looks1' for Fast RAM will 'Find" StarBoard2. And you'll Find that your applications run more efFiciently due to StarBoard2 on the bus.
A passing bus? Indeed!
What good is an Expansion Bus if it hits a dead end, as with some memory cards? Not much, we think -that’s why we carefully and compatibly passed through the bus so you could attach other devices onto your Amiga (including another StarBoard2, of course!).
The sum of the parts...
A really nice feature of the StarBoard2 system is that you can buy exactly what you need now without closing off your options for future exapansion. You can even buy a Ok StarBoard2 (with a one megabyte capacity) and populate it with your own RAM (commonly available 256k by 1 by 150ns memory chips). When you add StarBoard2 to your Amiga you have a powerful hardware combination, superior to any single-user micro on the market. See your Authorized Amiga Dealer today and ask for StarBoard2
SUGGESTED RETAIL PRICING:
Star8oard2, 0k (1 meg space):
$ 349 $ 395 $ 495 $ 595 $ 879 $ 959 $ 99 $ 99
StarBoard2, 0k (2 meg space):
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StarBoard2. 2 megs installed:
StarBoard2, 2 megs & MultiFunction:
Upper Deck, 0k (1 meg space):
MulliFunclion Module: also available:
Standard 256k memory card:
$ 129 $ 1495 $ 50
MAS-Drive20, 20 meg harddisk:
MouseTime, mouseport clock:
IFF CONVERSION ROUTINES
?Convert from any Resolution to any other Resolution ?Change Hold and Modify to LO-RES ?Change LO-RES to Hold and Modify ?Reduce or Expand Number of Bitplanes ?Bar Chart of Color Register Usage ?Manually or Automatically Reduce to
any Number of Colors in a Picture ?Quickly Merge Pixels of One Color into another Color ?Sort Colors by Number of Pixels or Color Intensity ?Generalized Palette Controls ?Map or Enhance Edges ?Filter Stray Pixels ?Great for Getting More Pictures on a Disk, Special Effects, or Eliminating Unnecessary Dithering In Digitized Pictures Requires 512K RAM
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Circle 193 on Reader Service card.
Presents The finest Studio Quality Sound Libraries for:
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• Soundscape
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Add professional quality and dimension to your Amiga. Our sounds are unsurpassed in versatility, integrity and variety. For composers,over 30 sounds per disk,Vols 1,2,3 • for each.
Other disks:
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FOR 1=0 TO 15 12=1+16
FOR J=] TO 3 : SWAP P(J , I),P(J,12) : NEXT J PALETTE I2,P(1,I2) 15!,P(2,I2) 15!,P(3,T2) 15! NEXT I
S WIT C H = - S VIT C H
IF SWITCIU-1 THEN MENU 2,1,1,"LOWER PALETTE"
IF SWITCH =1 THEN MENU 2,1,1,"UPPER PALETTE" RETURN
SWAPCOL: 'exchange two colors
LOCATE 3,2 : PRINT "SELECT COLOR TO BE SWAPPED" GOSUB SELECT
FOR .1=1 TO 3 : SWAP P(J , COL ) , P J , 12 ) : NEXT J PALETTE COL,P(1fCOLJ l5!,P(2,C0L) 15!,P(3,COL) 15! PALETTE I2,P(1,I2) 15!,P(2,I2) 15!,P(3,I2) 15! LOCATE 3,2 : PRINT STRINGS(26," ");
RETURN
SPREAD: LOG AT GOSUB ISTEP R! =12 FOR J FOR I FOR PAL NEXT LOG AT RET UR
nterpolate between two colors
1 i
E 3 SE = 1
- CO = 1 = C0 J = ETT I
E 3 N
,2 : PRINT "SELECT COLOR FOR SPREADING"
LECT
: IF I2CC0L THEN ISTEP=-1 L : IF R!=0 THEN RETURN
TO 3 : RGBS!(J)=(P(J,12)-P(J,COL)) R1 : NEXT J L+TSTEP TO I2-ISTEP STEP ISTEP
1 TO 3 : P(J,I)-P(J,COL)+RGBS!(J)*(I-COL) : NEXT J E I,P(1,I) 15!,P(2,I) 15!,P(3,I) 15!
,2 : PRINT STRINGS(26," ");
COPYCOL: 'copy one color to another
LOCATE 3,2 PRINT "SELECT COLOR FOR COPYING"
GOSUB SELECT
FOR J=l TO 3 : P(J,12)=P(J,COL). : NEXT J PALETTE I 2 , P(1,12) 15!,P(2,12) 15! ,P(3,I2) 15!
LOCATE 3,2 : PRINT STRINGS ( 26 ,11 " ) ;
RETURN
MIX C O L: 'mix two colors
LOCATE 3,2 : PRINT "SELECT OTHER COLOR"
GOSUB SELECT
FOR J=1 TO 3 : P(J ,COL) = (P(J,COL)+P(J,12)) 2 : NEXT J PALETTE COL,P(1,COL) 15!,P(2,COL) 15!,P(3,COL) 15!
LOCATE 3,2 : PRINT STR1NGS(26," ");
RETURN
CHBRIGHT: 'change the brightness of a color
LOCATE 3,2 : PRINT "PRESS ANY TWO KEYS TO CHANGE"
M A X = 100 FOR 1=1 TO 3
RGB(I) = P (I ,COL)
IF RGB(T)>MAX THEN TMAX=I : MAX = RGB I)
NEXT T
IF M A X = 0 THEN GOTO CHEND
FOR 1=1 TO 3 : RGBS!(I)=RGB(I) MAX : NEXT I I0FF=0 : A$ ="" : BS=""
CHLOOP:
C S = IN K E Y S
IF C$ ="" THEN GOTO CHLOOP IF A $ = "" THEN A $ = C $
IF B$ = THEN B$ = C$
TF A$ = B$ THEN B$ = ""
IS T E P = 0
IF C $ = A $ THEN ISTEP = -1 IF C$ = B$ THEN ISTEP=1 IF ISTEP = 0 THEN GOTO CHEND 10 F F = 10 F F +1 S T E P FOR 1=1 TO 3
RGBN I)=RGB(I)+IOFF*RGBS!(I)
IF RGBN(I)>15 THEN RGBN(I)=15 IF RGBN(I) 0 THEN RGBN(T)=0 NEXT I
PALETTE COL , RGBN( 1 ) 1 5 ! , RGBN ( 2 ) 1 5 ! , RGBN ( 3) 1 5 ! Listing continued on p. 78.
$ 25,000
DATAMAT A PPLIGVTIONS CONTEST
(THE NO CODING NO PROGRAMMING RELATIONAL DATABASE)
oin us in our first ever contest to find the best application designed by you, the users of DATAMAT1'1 RELATIONAL DATABASE MANAGEMENT SYSTEM.
Prizes
One Grand Prize ...$ 10,000.00
One First Prize .....$ 5,000.00
Ten Second Prizes ..$ 1,000.00 each
Entries may win on any one of the following criteria: Creativity-
Utility of Application Completeness of Application or Clarity of Documentation
r
The Rules Are Simple:
1. All entries must be postmarked by May 4th 1987.
2. Each entry must be submitted separately with a completed entry form, application disk and documentation.
3. All entries must be made on Version 1.02 or later of DATAMAT™ AMIGA-DOS or MS-DOS. Free up-grades will be provided upon request to registered owners of earlier AMIGA™ Versions of DATAMAT™
4. No purchase necessarv entrant need not own or buy DATAMAT.™
5. No entry may be copyrighted.
6. All entries will be judged by outside independent reviewers. The winners will be announced by August 31, 1987.
7. Employees or family members of employees of TRANSTIME TECHNOLOGIES CORPORATION are not eligible to enter.
8. ALL WINNING ENTRIES BECOME THE SOLE AND EXCLUSIVE PROPERLY OF TRANSTIME TECHNOLOGIES CORPORATION TO USE IN ANY WAY TRANSTIME TECHNOLOGIES CORPORATION SEES FIT.
9. Non-winning entries will not be returned to the submittor.
Contest winners will be notified by registered mail. A list of winners will be sent upon receipt of request and a self- addressed, stamped envelope.
Grand and First Prizes will be awarded at Fall 1987 Comdex. Transtime Technologies Corporation will pay the hotel and round trip transportation costs to Comdex for the Grand and First Prize winners or their representative.
Send the completed entry form, application disk and documentation to:
DATAMAT™ CONTEST Suite 217
3380 Sheridan Drive Amherst, New York 14226
F
DATAMA'I “ i' .i ii.nlrm.iiL nl li.uiMimr Ctirpur.iiion.
AMIGA is ,i irutU-murJt of Commodore Amiga ImciifKiraird MS DOS is .i ir.nU-m.iik of Microsoft Corpor.itiun.
Entry form
I have read and understood the contest rules and agree to them.
I am submitting my entry on DATAMAT™:
A-200 ____MX-200_Serial _
A-300_MX-300 __ . _Scrial _
I AGREE THAT SHOULD MY ENTRY WIN. MY ENTRY SHALL BECOME THE SOLE AND EXCLUSIVE PROPERTY OF TRANSTIME TECHNOLOGIES CORPORATION.
I am the owner of the application and documentation that I am submitting. I acknowledge receipt of a copy of the contest rules. I understand TRANSTIME TECHNOLOGIES CORPORATION will not return my entry to me,
I have not copyrighted this material.
My application is:_
Signature: _____
Name: __ ___
Street Address:_ ,
City, State. Zip:_
)_
Area Code, Phone(
DATAMAT™ is now available for AMIGA-DOS and MS-DOS.
For Your Nearest Authorized Dealer or to Order Direct Call (outside N.Y. State) 1-800-822-7701 (inside N.Y. State) 716-874-2010
TRANSTIME
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810 Sheridan Drive Tonawanda, NY 14150
(716) 874-2010
A high performance programming environment designed specifically for the Amiga1*4
Multi - Forth™ for the Amiga
FOR J = 1 TO 3 : P(J, COL)=RGBN J) : NEXT J GOSUB ALLC0L0R FOR 1=1 TO 100 : NEXT 1 GOTO CHL00P CHEND:
LOCATE 3,2 : PRINT STRINGS(28 ," "); RETURN
SELECT: ’select second color
WHILE MOUSE(0)01 : WEND 12 = (MOUS E(1)-15) 10+16 RETURN
Multi-Forth is a new language which was designed to unleash the full power of the Amiga. Multi- Forth provides complete access to all Amiga libraries including Intuition. It compiles standalone applications in seconds (other languages t picalh lake several minutes). There are no royalties and no "levels." Csl pros ides the best support of any computer language vendor, including Csl technical hoi line, our own CompuServe net fC.O FORTIIj. And comprehensive documentation Programming the Amiga is interactive and fun with Multi-Forth. Contact us for a technical data sheet with the complete list of Multi-Forth's features.
e* f m AW
EXTTPALETTE: ’exit
MENU RESET WINDOW CLOSE 2 SCREEN CLOSE 2 END
INITPALETTE: ’initialize color palette PALETTE 6 , 1 ! , 1 ! , I !
PALETTE 7,1!,0!,0!
PALETTE 8,0!,1!,0!
PALETTE 9,0! ,0! , 1 !
C0L=16
FOR 1=0 TO 31
FOR J=1 TO 3 : P(J, T ) = I MOD 16 : NEXT J IF I>15 THEN PALETTE I,P( 1 ,1) 15! ,P(2,1) 15! ,P(3 ,1) 15 ! NEXT I
GOSUB ALLCOLOR RETURN
f rom program
INITMENU: MENU 1 MENU 1 MENU 1 MENU 1 MENU 2 MENU 2 S WIT C H =
4701 Randolph Road, Suite 12 1-S00-FORTHOK
Rockville, MD 20352 in MD (301) O«4-02b2
ArnlJj IS 41 tna.iJtTn.lTk of Conimi.li ift-Amiga. I'm.
Multl-portK is .1 Ituiltmjtk ¦•f 'ttalltc S illil jialls. Itlk
Circle 60 on Reader Service card.
MENU
MENU
MENU
MENU
MENU
MENU
MENU
2
2
2
2
2
3
3
NEXT I
Hors d’oeuvres
Unique applications, tips
and stuff
You may be using your Amiga at work, at home, or in the back seat of your car. But somehow you'll be using it in a unique way. You will discover things that will let you do something faster, easier or more elegantly.
AmgaWorld would like to share those shortcuts, ideas, things to avoid, things to try, etc., with everyone, and we’ll reward you with a colorful, appetizing, official AmigaWorld T-shirt. (Just remember to tell us your size.)
Send it in, no matter how outrageous, clever, humorous or bizarre. We will read anything, but we won't return it, so keep a copy for yourself. In cases of duplication, T-shirts are awarded on a first come, first serve basis.
So. Put on your thinking berets and rush those suggestions to:
Hors d’oeuvres AmigaWorld editorial 80 Elm Street Peterborough, NH 03458
MIX: ’display selected color
PALETTE COL,P(1,COL) 15! ,P(2 , COL) 15! ,P(3,COL) 15!
PALETTE 10,(15-P(1 , COL)) 15! ,(15-P(2,COL)) 15 ! , (15-P(3,COL )) 1 5!
LINE (180,30)-(240,80),C0L,BF
RETURN
RED: 'adjust red color gauge
LINE (10,30) (170,40),7,BF X=10*P(1,COL)+10 LINE (X , 30) ( 10 + X,40),6,BF RETURN
GREEN: 'adjust green color gauge
LINE (10,50)-(170,60),8,BF X=10*P(2,COL)+10 LINE (X , 50 )-(10+X,60),6,BF RETURN
BLUE: ’adjust blue color gauge
LINE (10,70)-(170,80),9»BF X=10*P(3,C0L)+10 LINE (X , 70 ) -( 10 + X,80),6,BF RETURN
ALLCOLOR: ’repaint palette
GOSUB RED : GOSUB GREEN : GOSUB BLUE : GOSUB MIX FOR 1=0 TO 15 : LINE (10+1*10,1)-(20+I*10,10),I+16,BF LINE (10+(COL-16)*10,1)-(20+(COL-16)*10,10),10,B RETURN
initialize menus 0, 1 ’STORE"
1 ,1 ’SAVE COLOR TABLE"
2. 1 'LOAD COLOR TABLE"
3. 1 'SAVE SUBROUTINE"
0,1 ’SPECIALS"
1. 1,"LOWER PALETTE"
-1
2, 1 'SWAP COLOR"
3. 1 'SPREAD COLOR"
4. 1, "COPY COLOR"
5, 1 ’MIX COLORS"
6. 1,"CHANGE BRIGHTNESS" 0, 1 ’ACTIONS"
1 , 1 ’EXIT PROGRAM"
RETURN
20-Meg
SCSI Hard Drive s999
95
Full AutoConfig
Full Pass-Through out of Amiga expansion port
Controller Supports 7 additional devices
Internal Power Supply
Faster than any comparably-priced drive
Circle 59 on Reader Service card
Create
your own
hard drive
system
Buy Components Separately
s 7QQ95
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299
95
Controller
JetSet
Hmeh
T inama,
Amiga Laser Printing Software s6995
Works with Hewlett Packard LaserJet or compatible laser printer
TM
Hundreds of Fonts available (starter typeface included)
Works with Textcraft™ & Scribble™
JetSet Fonts
s4995 to s9995
Complete Typeface in each package e.g. italic, bold italic, bold, demi-bold, regular in variety of sizes)
Selection Includes.. .Times ¦ Triumvirate ITC Souvenir ¦ Old English ¦ Unical Commercial Script ¦ Dom Casual ITC Benguiat Bold ¦ Broadway Globe Gothic Outline ¦ Borders Symbols ¦ ITC Dingbats ITC Souvenir Greek Math ITC Times Greek Math. And many, many more.
Full AutoConfig Compatibility
Works with all popular Amiga software
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Reviews
Defender of the Crown
Don your chainmail and prepare to ride. The kingdom’s safety is in your hands.
Looking for a little adventure in vour life? Try Defender of the Crown, a combination strategy, arcade, role-playing game that takes you back to the time of stouthearted knights and fair maidens. Defender of the Crown is the first in a series of “movie-like” games from Master Designer Software that combine traditional computer-game elements with plot ancl characters. As a story and a strategy game, Defender of the Crown succeeds wonderfully; it only falters in its arcade sequences.
The game begins with the death of King Richard I. The kingdom is divided between six knights three Saxons and three Normans. As one of those Saxon knights, your task is to unify the country by conquest and expel the Norman invaders.
You do have help: Robin of Lock- sley better known as Robin Hood -has pledged to come to your assistance three times in your quest. His aid will be invaluable as the game progresses.
Defending the Crown
England is divided into 18 territories. Six are the home territories of the original knights; the remainder arc ripe for conquest. Conquering a territory gives you the allegiance of the vassals who live there and a regular income that you can use to build your army. Conquering all 18 territories wins the game and brings peace to the land.
Each turn in Defender of the Crown represents one month. After the computer adds your current income to your treasury, you choose vour plan of action for that turn. You can hold a jousting tournament to win land or fame, raid an opposing castle for treasure, seek conquest, build your army or read the map. You can access the last two options as often as you wish. 'Hie first three, however, are exclusive options you can only choose one per turn. T hough you can use the conquest option to move your army between territories you already own without ending your turn, you can only conquer one territory per "month.” Conquering territories is the prime objective of Defender of the Crown, and in this aspect, the game plays a lot like Risk, the strategy board-game from Parker Brothers. 1 like this side of Defender of the Crown best for. Although the game mechanics are simple, you can employ some subtle strategies in acquiring land. My favorite is to sit back
and let the other players all controlled independently by the computer battle for a choice territory. After they've exhausted one another, my relatively fresh army has no problems taking over.
Jousts, Rescues and Raids
Although conquest is paramount, the outcome of Defender of the Crown is also dependent upon the arcade elements of the game. And. Although these sequences feature beautiful graphics and animation, they arc simplistic. For instance, if you elect to try to conquer an enemy castle, you will first have the opportunity to breach the castle walls with a catapult. After two or three attempts, you will be a catapult expert and bored by future breach attempts. A similar complaint holds for the rescue and raiding ?
N
'owhere has technology moved
so fast as in todays music studios.

Two years ago MIDI was just being established as an industry standard and the number of music software manufacturers could be counted on one hand. Over the same period music video has gone from experimental to an established art. Computers, video and music have joined to make musicians multi-media technology artists.
Now Mimetics and Commodore- Amiga move into the next generation technology by combining affordable computers, music and video into a single integrated system which stretches beyond music videos and creates a completely interactive real-time music
video environment which is totally

SCSI. They also include a realtime clock with battery backup and the capability to add RAM expansion modules containing up to 4 megabytes of RAM.
I he Amiga SupraDrive 4X4 comes in three capacities 20,
30 and 60 megabytes. Their retail prices are $ 995, $ 1,195 and $ 1,995, respectively. For more information, contact Supra Corp., 1 133 Commercial Way, Albany, OR 97321. 503 967-
9075.
I he latest from Aegis Development is a note-editor and MIDI-sequencer called Aegis Sonix. The “son of Musicraft” Aegis bought the program from Commodore and upgraded it
considerably. Sonix lets you cn-

case CLOSE WINDOW: * If the window is closed *
ClearPointer (my_window); * restore the pointer, *
Close Window (my_window); * close up the window *
exit (TRUE); * and exit *
case NEWSIZE: * Give a new target if resized :;7
putbox (m y_window, &boxx, Sboxy, & old m illis); break;
case MOUSEBUTTONS: If the mouse button is used
if (code == SELECTUP) * and if it is a selecL up *
(
Check if the pointer and the box are close enough to count as a "hit". If so, compute the score as the milliseconds since the box was displayed less than 3 seconds. Make sure the score is not negative and add it to the total score. Display the results *
Listing continued on p. 106.
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Circle 54 on Reader Service card.
If (fiit_ (ptrx, ptry, boxx, boxy))
(
score = 3000 - miHis + oldmiUis; if (score 0) score = 0; total += score;
write_score (my_window, total, score, ++numhit): putbox ( m v_w indow, &boxx, &boxy, & old millis);
}
break;
}
* This function creates a window with some "reasonable” default parameters. The caller specifies the title of the window and the function fills in the value of the returned window pointer -¦'
v ind_c rea te (win d o w_ptr, t:i til e) struct Window **window ptr; char Title;
¦•' Pointer to a window pointer Requested title *
*1

}'¦¦ Subsequent times erase the old box. Do this by taking the
background pen and using it draw over the old box s coordinates t hal are still in the static array corners "7
Set A Pen (window_ptr -> Rport, 0);
Move (window*_ptr -> Rport, corners(6], cornersfTj);
Poly Draw (window ptr -> Rport, A, corners);
)
* Get some random x and y coordinates that are within the range of our window’s size *
20) ;
- TO);
while ((top = (rand() & 0x3ff)) > window_ptr - Width
* x = tmp + 10;
while ((tmp = (rand() & Ox Iff)) > window_ptr -> Height
* y = tmp + 20;
* Build the corners around the box's center *
PACKED WITH POWER!
ZINC!™ provides you with a perfect blending of the powerful features available from the CLI environment and the simple and intuitive environment of Workbench™ where files can be manipulated by pointing at icons with the mouse. All of the basic system commands (available in
CLI) have been carefully re-designed into mouse, menu, and function key operations. This not only saves you a great deal of time, but also makes
using the AMIGA® easier than any other computer. ZINC! Is the kind of interface needed since the first
a. ,K1 computers used mouse and window interaction. In addition to enhancing and simplifying the old computer capabilities, ZING! Provides an integrated collection of new tools for the AMIGA. Everyone, from the beginner to the expert, will find using the AMIGA easier and more productive with a sidekick like ZINC!. Order yours now for only $ 79.95 plus $ 3.00 shipping and handling.
MERIDIAN SOFTWARE INCH
P. O. Box 890408 Houston, TX. 77289-0408
A ZING! Keys
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(713) 488-2144
Credit Cards and Dealer Inquiries Welcome!
Corners[0] = torners[6] = :;:x - 4;
corners! 1] = corners[3] = *y - 3;
corners[2] = corners[4] - *x -f 4;
corners! 3] = corners! 7] = *y + 3;
Get pen number one and draw the box with it *
Set A Pen (window_ptr -> R Port, 1);
Move (window plr -> R Port, corners ], corners!?]);
Poly Draw (window_ptr -> Rport, 4, corners);
* Get the current time and translate it into milliseconds *
CurrentTirne (&sec, & mic);
* millis = (sec 10) + (mic >> 10);
)
Check if the user click the pointer "close enough" to the target *
hit (xl, yl, x2, y2)
SHORT xl, vl. X2, y2;

SHORT dx, dy;
dx - xl - x2; f* Get the x and the y coordinate *
dy = y 1 v2; * differences *
* if either difference is greater the ACCURACY required return false, Otherwise return true *
8 MEGABYTES
Now RS DATA'S New POW»R»CARD
Let's You Play Like The Big Boys.
Playing games on your Amiga can be a great deal of fun, but let's be honest there's more to life than playing games. Now you can turn your computer into a real-life professional machine with the POW*R«CARD from RS DATA Systems.
The POW R»CARD is a powerful new expansion board which allows you to mature in your computer use with greater flexibility in multi-processing and multi-tasking.
POW*R*CARD starts you off with a 2 Meg capability and allows you to grow with upgrades to a huge 8 Meg RAM expansion, all on the same board so you don't waste valuable slot space. That means you can run more software without fear of Guru Meditation Numbers, out-of- memory crashes or any other small system boo-boos! What's more, you won't have to rob your piggy bank because POW«R*CARD offers this tremendous growth at a cost lower per megabyte than you'll find anywhere.
With your new POW»R*CARD,
memory expansion is as easy as 1-2-3. The POW*R«CARDand enclosure will pass through the Buss without modification for even greater expansion. So you don't have to play games with your data anymore. Graduate to bigger and better things with the POW«R«CARD from RS DATA!
Upcoming Products from RS DATA;
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• Much, much more!!!
The POW*R*CARD is available now from your local Amiga dealer... or call RS DATA today!
7322 Southwest Freeway Suite 660
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Moving Drivers
Q: hi the November December ’86 issue, Amiga World reviewed color printers. I now own a Canon PJ- 1080A color printer. My problem relates to the driver. It works fine, but I don't know how to copy it to other disks. I've tried dragging Preferences from one Workbench to another, but with no success. How can I copy my printer driver onto other disks so that I can use my printer with those programs? Also, do you know if there is a printer driver available for the Gemini I OX?
Fred Child Wendell Freeville, NY
A: The Preferences program doesn’t actually contain the Amiga printer drivers; these are contained in the Devs Printers
directory of vour Workbench

disk. Use the CLI to copy the Canon driver from the Devs I Printers directory of your Workbench disk to the Devs Printers directory of your other disks. With a two-drive system, the command line would look like this:
COPY DFOiDEVS PRIXTERS CANON PJl 080A TO DF1: DEVS PRINTERS CANON _PJ1080A.
With a one-drive system, you’ll
7 J
have to use the volume names of the disks instead of the physical device name (dfO:) and do some disk swapping as prompted.
Once you’ve copied the driver to a particular disk, boot vour system with that disk and
J 4
open Preferences. Go to the Change Printer screen and se-
By Bob Ryan
lect Custom as your printer.
Then click on the Custom Printer Name box and change the name to Canon_PJ1080A. Return to the main Preferences menu, click on Save, and your Canon driver is ready to go.
Regarding your second question, use the Epson driver to run your Gemini 10X with the Amiga.
Open Files, Custom Fonts and 1.2
Q: When working with Amiga Basic, I sometimes try to list my program to my printer, using either Llist or the long version of List, only to get a “File already open” message. What is the problem? Did delete a necessary file somewhere? What file is already open?
Secondly, is there any easy way to edit the character set on the Amiga?
I need math symbols for my work that are not available in any of the standard fonts. Is there a good font editor available for the Amiga?
Finally, what are the advantages of Kicks tart 1.2, and will Commodore send free updates to Amiga owners?
Gunter Hartel
Englewood, CO
A: The “File” that Amiga Basic reports being open when you try to list a program is the printer device: Remember, Amiga Basic treats devices as files. My guess is that you opened the printer device in a program and then exited the program without closing the file. To take care of the problem, simply type CLOSE in the output window before listing the file.
COMPUTER
ORDERS 1-800-221-6086
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The 1.2 Amiga Enhancer Software Kit has a font editor in the Tools drawer on the Amiga Extras disk. This is one good example of the 1.2 enhancements; other advantages of 1.2 over 1.1 have been pretty well covered in our info.phile columns in this issue and in the last issue. Everyone with an Amiga should upgrade to the new operating
system.

The 1.2 enhancement (which contains Kickstart. Workbench and the Amiga Extras disk with, among other things, a revised Amiga Basic) is available as of this writing. My local dealer is selling it for $ 12.50: It is not a free upgrade.
Directory Suicide
Q: have two AmigaDOS batch files for working with a RAM disk. As you can see, the first creates a C directory on the disk, moves the CLI commands to the disk, and then designates the Ramx directory as the system command directory. The second file is supposed to delete the RAM disk.
Tnakeram
echo “Putting DOS commands into RAM." Cd sysx makedir ram:c assign x: copy assign d: ramx x: assign d: x: dir d: x: delete d: x: execute d: x: copy d: x: type d: x: list d: x: info d:
x: run d: x: cd d: x: ed d: assign c: ramie
kitIrani assign c: sysx delete ramx ? Delete ramx cd sysx
My problem is with the second file; it fails to delete the Ramx directory even though it does delete all the files in the directory. When I get to the command delete ramie, I get the message “Not deleted-object in use." Why can’t I delete the C directory?
Jim Ernest APO, New York
A: I like the way that you made assignments for Copy and Ramx in your Makcram file thus cutting down your typing but I think that this is the cause of your problem. 1 executed your files under both
Workbench 1.1 and 1.2 and I encountered the same thing you did; the Ramx directory will not delete. Before bashing my head against a wall, however, I tried something different: I removed your assignment of Ramx to d; and edited Makeram, substituting Ramx for d:. Lo and behold, when I ran Killram, the C directory was deleted. Problem solved.
Why did you get the “Object in use” message? I think the reason was simply that you had assigned a logical name to Ramx. The system then considered Ramx “in use” and wouldn’t let you delete ItM
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2S6K RAW Expansion
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A-Time
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Camera WV1410 wAens
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Mas Drive 20
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Printer -Okim ate 20
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Starboard 022 Megabytes
col
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£62
C-64 Emulator
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£127
Dbm an
£106
OiskWk
£36
Lattice *C‘ Compiler
£115
Usp
£139
Mac Library
£64
Manx *C* (Developers)
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Marauder II
£29
Mirror
£34
Moduta 2 (Developers)
£112
Pascal
£70
Schematics
£22
Screen Editor
£85
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£64
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UNLEASH THE AWESOME POWER OF THE AMIGA!,
WITH PAL SYSTEMS
• Supports Three Half Height Devices
• Hard Disks
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• Five DMA Expansion Slots
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• Auto-Configure
• 200 Watt Power Supply
• DMA Hard Disk Controller (ST506 412)
• Optional additional SCSI
• 100%Zorro Compatible
• 1 to 9.5 Megabytes of Fast RAM
WITH PAL Jr
• One Megabyte of Fast RAM
• DMA Hard Disk Controller
• 20 Megabyte Hard Disk
• Auto-Configure
• DMA SCSI Pass-through for further expansion
Suggested retail price only S1495
The TIC provides your Amiga with a tiny battery backed clock calendar that conveniently plugs into the second joystick port. The TIC's 3-year battery will maintain time even if temporarily removed from the Amiga. Change the Amiga's internal time simply by moving the displayed clock’s hands with the mouse. Set your Amiga’s time once and for all. It’s about time for TIC. Suggested retail price only S59.95.
The Information Manager. Hierarchial Database that allows you to organize and display text and graphical tiles, e.g. Real Estate Listings. Personnel Files, Digitized X*RaysT Geographical Maps, etc. Fully supports multi-tasking. Fast access by menu or outline. INFOMINDER will revolutionize the way you store and access both textual and graphical information. Get INFOMINDER today at the special introductory price of only S89.95.
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AMIGA is a trademark ol Commodore-Arruga, Inc
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